NEWS

Touring artist pops up in Bedford Park coffee shop

PERFORMING HER CRAFT: Artist Micheline Montgomery doodles a profile during her visit to a midtown coffee shop.
COFFEE AND ART: Artist Micheline Montgomery doodles a profile during a recent visit to a midtown coffee shop.

Micheline Montgomery blushes when she is asked how to pronounce her first name.

The artist is seated in an isolated corner of a Second Cup coffee shop in Bedford Park in late April, talking about more than the pronunciation of her name being “like Michelin Tires.” A Mississauga-based artist who tours North America, she is here through through her connection with Artify and portfolio manager Susan Brown, herself a midtown artist, who does a lot of work promoting art locally.

Montgomery’s work ranges from abstract profiles, a la Frida Kahlo and Pablo Picasso, to book-making by using recycled materials such as milk cartons and coffee filters. She describes herself as “an eco-friendly artist” and says she prefers the small coffee shops to large exhibitions.

Faces she has created in her artwork look down from the walls of the midtown coffee shop, and she smiles.

“I love faces,” she acknowledges, adding that “the inspiration comes from inside but it is gathered from years of experience.”

She has painted profiles of men, but admits she find herself more at ease with the female visage.

“It’s just what comes out,” she says. “The face is about something else. It’s not about being a woman.”

Outside of her usual work, on canvas and recycled materials, Montgomery is putting together a project that depicts 40 of the biggest influencers in her life.

Entitled 40, the project includes painting and writing distilled bios about how she was inspired by names like Picasso, Albert Einstein, Steve Jobs, Simone de Beauvoir, Martin Heidegger, Frank Gehry, Glenn Gould, Baba Sali, Edith Piaf, Björk and Anselm Kiefer.

Those who have influenced her says a lot about who she is and what she likes, and highlights her artistic nature, she says.

“Art is not part of my life. It is my life. Art and life is intertwined. Art is a means to understand life.”