Biography

Professional artist for over 20 years, it is within an international atmosphere that Lonica spends her youth in Canada, far from her birth place, Royan, France.  Born to multicultural, avant-garde parents who are artists, as well as gallery and business owners, granddaughter to a French diplomat, she grows up in the rugged nature surrounding the Great Lakes just north of Toronto.  This roaring syncretism of art culture, entrepreneurial initiative and wilderness allow her to realize early on that she is an artist and naturalist, a multifaceted creative who is viscerally attached to her freedom.
Upon completion of her OAC diploma, not yet of age, sketch book, paints and pencils in hand, she travels lengthily throughout Europe and North America.  In order to fully devote herself to her art business, she settles in Isla Holbox, Mexico in 1998, where she develops her career until 2008.  Multicultural, off the beaten path, yet traveler friendly, Holbox allows her to reach and sell her work to an upbeat, international clientele and several appearances in the press soon follow. She participates in numerous group and solo shows in nearby Cancun, Puerto Morelos and Cozumel.  During this period, she continues to travel extensively in Mexico, working for a time as a commissioned muralist in Oaxaca in 2001.  She also spends several seasons in the mountains of British Columbia in 2005 and 2007, where her work is well greeted by an expanding, local client base.   
She returns to France in 2008 and obtains a Master’s degree, with honours, in Language, Culture and International Affairs of the Americas in 2014, all the while continuing her artistic production. 
Today, she shares her time between France and Mexico, with her language-loving, ocean-adventure family, where she observes the contradictions and influences of these cultures, producing a diverse body of work in oil, acrylic and mixed media.  Being a professional creative of multiple expressions is indispensible to her as a fine artist.  She travels between painting, writing and performance arts, just as she travels between countries; adapting to the languages of these manifestations, with the full spectrum of her multilingualism, her emotion and her artistic sensitivity.      
Since her youth, Lonica has been passionately dedicated to many volunteer projects as an independent volunteer, generally with the support and recognition of the municipalities in which she has worked, committed to the promotion of culture, ecology, health and wellness in rural areas. 

Artist statement

Since childhood as a young naturalist, I have been mesmerized by the diverse flora and fauna of the North America’s rugged landscapes. A profound and passionate observation of nature and the elements - in their splendour and harshness - did not only provide endless, colour-infused inspiration, but sparked my desire to interpret and recreate the stunning, visual information of my surroundings. The wilderness - from northern Canada to southern Mexico - continues to form my vision, my creativity and my artistry. After 10 years of residence in France, my unwavering joy and nostalgia for rural America and Europe continue to impact the nature of production. 

From a young age, growing up in the family art gallery, I admired and childishly envied the many great artists that exhibited there. Their work was fascinating. Their techniques were wildly diverse: Totally mind-blowing. Painfully meticulous. Loose and self-assured. Rugged and nonchalant. Serious and abiding. Easy and weightless. Strained and heavy. Focused and energetic. Detached and carefree. Rigorous and animated. Lethargic and steady. All magnificent. All riotously different. I naively wanted to be all of those things, and paint all of those things. They were artistically heroic to my young yet becoming-well-trained eye. I dreamed of painting. In parallel, I learned that the fine talents of each artist were secondary to their countless hours of relentless work. Thus, this assured me that my artistic fantasies were possible if I worked, relentlessly. Through years of exposure to stylistic variety, at age 8, my mind began to question and understand one recurrent theme: Validity, validation and value. Of course, at my young age, I used very different terms in my questioning: If an artist of great technique is creating this work, it must be important! Right? If artists develop their technique, their styles, works and visions are valuable. Their art is valid and valuable because it is. It is made, it is visible, it is valuable was my equation. Artistic expression, no matter what form it may assume, is to be considered, validated and valued. This should certainly not become an excuse for poor execution or sloppy technique, but rather a reminder that quality ‘technique’ can be expressed and perceived in a myriad of ways. 

My body of work is the result of these influences. They are my drive as an artist. I am currently developing various series of fine art paintings which allow for diversity of colour, brush stroke and technique, which, in turn, allow for my enthusiasm and eager willingness to work. Many of my paintings however, are outsiders that just don’t fit-in to any one collection. I shall title them ‘The Misfits’. They are fleeting moments, images, sentiments, whims and visions that appear only once. 

Illustration for a variety of stories, texts and themes is another important aspect of my work.  In the studio, I work in water-soluable oils (Winsor&Newton) and extra-fine, professional quality acrylic paints (Golden, Liquitex, Kroma) on canvas, as well as molding paste, texture in diverse mediums and pigments. When I travel for short periods, water colour pencils and sticks on cotton paper are valuable go-to mediums for preliminary sketching (and doodling with my kids), for their practicality, drying time and space efficiency in the suitcase.