Biography

Martine Fourcand is a Canadian painter, poet and theatrical designer of Haitian and Swiss origins who lives in Montreal.

After spending her childhood in Haiti, she moved to Canada in 1979 and studied sociology and communications, with a special focus on the semiology of cultural productions at the University of Quebec in Montreal.

In 1982, she began exhibiting her artwork in Montreal (Galerie Maximum, La Cuisse de Velours, Lilith, Centre Culturel Hector Hyppolite), and during the 1990’s, her work was shown in Haiti (Galerie Jean-René Jerôme, Musée Saint Pierre, Ateliers Zaka), in China and in Spain (Casa de America de Madrid.)

After a period of other professional activity, she resumed painting and exhibiting in Montreal.

In 2015, she had a solo exhibit (“In the Blood of the Sun”) at the Atelier Ilinca Ghibue, and in 2016 another solo exhibit (“A Certain Smile”) at the Erga Gallery. 

In February 2017, she participated in a Black History Month group show at Georges Laoun. In April, her work was featured in another group show, “Women Between Earth and Sky”, at Galerie Le 1040. Later in April/May, she had a solo exhibit, “Springtime Forever”, at Georges Laoun. The more than forty paintings offered a context for exploring the metaphor of Springtime as Promise of infinite renewal.

In June 2017, “The Spirit of Jazz In Living Color” opened at the Church of St. John the Evangelist (The Red Roof Church).  This exhibit, coincident with the Montreal Jazz Festival, “made you hear colors”.

A number of the recently-exhibited paintings have been inspired by other art forms and featured in other contexts. In November 2016, Martine Fourcand created a painting to illustrate the cover of Kerline Devise’s poetry collection “Nudité et Fragments”, published by Les Ecrits des Forges. It was followed by a series of paintings inspired by the collection entitled “Secrets of lava”.  The Spring 2017 issue of The Adirondack Review, a New York quarterly review of literature and the arts, featured the painting “A Certain Smile” on its cover and several others appeared in its pages.

Martine’s poems have appeared in a variety of publications, notably in Terre de femmes, 150 ans de poésie féminine haïtienne (Paris: Bruno Doucey Editions, 2010), and in the French review Carnavalesques, “Voices of Women of the Americas", (Editions Aspect, France, 2013).