Major, Christine

A representative figure in Canada’s new generation of painters, Christine Major has had some fifteen solo exhibitions in Canada, among which should be noted Vivarium in 2004, presented in the Freeform Series of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. This exhibition marked the beginning of her work with representations of animals. Far removed from traditional animal painting in her approach, Major shows us peacocks, skunks, elephants and ostriches that have been stripped of grace and beauty, in short of the notions of harmony normally associated with nature. Victims of brutal and incongruous displacements, they appear to have been dropped in the middle of a highway, or caught in the meshes of a net hung above a suburb. It is in spectacularly human—and concrete—situations that Major’s animals evolve or stagnate. Her work is part of numerous collections including those of the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the National Bank of Canada and Hydro-Québec. She has presented papers at many venues in Canada. Her painting was the subject of a documentary by Bernar Hébert, which was broadcast on ARTV in 2010. She teaches painting at Concordia University and the University of Ottawa. Represented by Galerie Donald Browne