We recently connected with Ysabel LeMay and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Ysabel, thanks for joining us today. Can you share an important lesson you learned in a prior job that’s helped you in your career afterwards?
Advertising was the foundation of my artistic career. I first worked at larger advertising agencies which thought me to work with a team. As well, I learned to be comfortable handling budgets, hiring suppliers and artists, and firing the ones who were preventing me from delivering quality products on time. I also learned to think differently, outside the box when promoting my clients. I applied all these skills as a fine arts artist.
Ysabel, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
There are places in the world where art sells in great abundance – think of London, Paris, or Dubai. Austin artist Ysabel LeMay is certainly familiar with those cities and their art markets, having had her work exhibited and sold globally. What LeMay values far more, however, is an environment in which she can create her best work, following her creative intuitions without impediments. That’s why she chose Austin, the cultural hub of Texas, as her home 10 years ago.
For the last ten years, LeMay has traveled the world constantly, embarking on photographic expeditions in locales with distinctive flora and fauna. She does this to gather raw material for her practice as an artist. The core of her work is what she calls ‘hypercollage’ – an enhanced approach to digital collage, in which many fragments of original nature photography are woven into tableaus with the cohesion and persuasiveness of classical painting. What LeMay strives to capture and share with her work is not just superficial aesthetic beauty, but something more profound. An expression of grace, she calls it, honoring nature’s infinite procession of interrelationships as inspiration for our own lives. LeMay’s work is a striking reminder of the vital, nourishing energy it harbors.
Since winning the New York KiptonART 2011 Rising Stars Program, LeMay’s work has seen more than 125 exhibitions around the globe and has been acquired for the corporate collections of Chevron, Bloomingdale’s and Bacardi, as well as for the permanent collections at the Museum of Photographic Arts and the Morris Museum. In 2013, she participated in the Texas Biennial and in 2015, she represented Texas at the fourth edition of Women to Watch in Washington, D.C. In 2017, LeMay held a solo retrospective show at the Morris Museum, New Jersey, was commissioned by the U.S. Department of State for the American Institute in Taiwan and was a visiting instructor at the Santa Fe Photographic Workshop in New Mexico.
My journey as an artist started at the tender age of five, when I was just old enough to wander freely on my father’s magical land, hidden inside a national park in Quebec, Canada.
To this day, being alone in nature is my favorite thing to do. I remember vividly the sensations I experienced while walking through the deep forest, awakening all my senses. The smell of the wet forest floor, the light dancing through the trees, the sound of the river, and the night sky filled with stars… such beauty and wonder brought joy to my heart and opened the gate to my creativity.
It was, however, the concrete jungle of the advertising world where I honed my visual expression. After 15 years in the industry, I sought a more rewarding path for my creativity. I refocused my energy initially on painting and then moved into photography while continuing to apply painterly techniques to my work.
My hypercollages are a recent development in a creative career that has evolved over decades. It is in fact a fusion of two previous periods in my life — my years as an advertising designer, during which I developed skills in digital imagery, and then my years exploring the art of painting, during which I mastered my aesthetic sensibilities and came to apply a deeper more spiritual approach to visual creativity.
My technique may be high-tech, but a key element of my hypercollages requires me to travel the globe on photographic expeditions, accumulating vast reserves of natural images. These I studiously review, extracting elements according to my intuition, and then assembling them into baroque tableaux intended to venerate the undeniable majesty and generosity of nature.
Some artists hope for a specific reaction from their audience; while I respect that conviction, I consider myself to be more of a conduit, a gateway through which my viewers can pass in order to immerse themselves in nature’s mysteries and marvels. I leave it to my audience to decide how they want to engage with my creations. For some, they may be pleasant and charming and simply, a decoration for their lives. Others may experience something deeper, perhaps an insight into the spiritual realm. Ideally, I would hope my work offers the viewer a moment of meditative contemplation by which they can more fully comprehend their world and themselves.
: Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?
I can only answer this question by telling you the story of how I was once incredibly rewarded by seeing the art of another particular artist. His name is Jerome Martin. When I saw his exhibition at the Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art fifteen years back, his work had such intelligence and beauty that I understood at that precise moment what I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to reach that level of intelligence through my work and offer the same magnitude of excellence. This man changed the course of my life. I understood what was required of me in this life and how, by being dedicated to excellence, I could also impact the life of a few in a positive way. I hope my work offers a space where the viewer can connect with their higher self, the part that we have in each of us that makes us realize our dreams and inspire people along the way.
Alright – so here’s a fun one. What do you think about NFTs?
I am profoundly excited about NFT. This new medium of creation offers a chance for the artist to be viewed globally. You certainly have a much bigger market than what you’re limited to based on your local community. Not everyone has easy access to conventions, exhibitions, and galleries, and even for the ones who do, it doesn’t come close to the scale of the Internet. Much like it did for musicians and authors, the digital medium significantly lowers the barriers to entry for creators of art and collectibles. They don’t have the same gatekeepers to deal with as in the analog world. What’s more, they avoid the enormous hassle and upfront investment required to set up the manufacturing and distribution of a set of several thousand physical collectibles. It changes also the dynamic of commerce. Being able to sell their work at scale is a completely new opportunity that the vast majority of creators and artists simply didn’t have before.
Contact Info:
- Website: [email protected]
- Instagram: Ysabel LeMay
- Facebook: Ysabel LeMay
- Youtube: Ysabel LeMay
Image Credits
Cosmic Hive, 2022 / 48″X57″ and 59″X70″ Pinealia, 2022 / 36″ diameter and 48″ diameter Oracular, 2017 / 48″x48″ and 59″x59″ Life II, 2014 / 42″X60″ and 59″X84″ Opaline, 2022 / 25″X72″ and 34″X96″ Eden III, 2017 / 48″X48″ and 59″X59″ Nexus, 2015 / 32″ diameter and 42″ diameter The Cathedral, 2015 / 48″X48″ and 59″X59″