Lemay’s hyper collage process is instinctual and organic. She reveals the real world remixed to paradisal perfection, so vividly realized that one feels drawn to step into her immersive tableaux.

Growing up in Quebec, Canada, LeMay fastened her connection to the natural world at her family’s cottage in the northern wilderness of the province. But it was the jungle of the advertising world where LeMay honed her visual expression. After 15 years in the industry, she sought a more rewarding path for her creativity, refocusing initially on painting and then photography.

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BIOGRAPHY

Austin, Texas-based artist Ysabel LeMay is gaining ever-widening recognition for her digitally composed panoramas of natural richness, which

Since winning the New York KiptonART 2011 Rising Stars Program, LeMay’s work has seen more than 115 exhibitions around the globe and has been acquired for the corporate collections of Chevron, Bloomingdale’s and Bacardi, and the permanent collections at Museum of Photographic Arts and the Morris Museum.In 2013, LeMay 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 in Morristown, New Jersey. In addition, she was commissioned by the U.S. Department of State’s Art in Embassies Program for the American Institute in Taiwan. In 2018, she was a visiting instructor at the Santa Fe Photographic Workshop in New Mexico.

From there, LeMay developed her own distinctive technique, called hypercollage. Her practice, refined over more than a decade, sees her traveling the globe on photographic expeditions, accumulating vast reserves of natural imagery. These she studiously reviews, extracting elements according to her intuition and assembling them into baroque tableaux venerating the undeniable majesty and generosity of nature.

While her technique is high-tech, LeMay’s hypercollage process is instinctual and organic, allowing each piece to dictate its own destiny. From a single, simple starting point — an image, a color, an emotion — she follows a meticulous process. After first isolating and extracting elements of her photos, LeMay then weaves them together into intricate compositions of resplendent beauty.

LeMay has brought her hypercollages to a place where they now serve as records of natural splendor perpetually in motion – as expressed by an artist who herself shows no interest in standing still.

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STATEMENT

I’ve been asked many times why I do what I do. The answer changes just a little bit each time I’m asked, because the path I am on is one of constant discovery. Discovery of new techniques and applications for my art. of truths about myself and who I am. It’s a path that leads me, again and again, to immerse myself in the beauty and intelligence of nature.

 I’ve felt a deep attachment to nature since childhood. I grew up in the suburbs, where authentic beauty and inspiration were all too rare. It was only when my family and I spent time far from there, in the wilderness, that I felt free. I felt my creativity awaken almost instantly. I could wander and discover the living world, to gain knowledge and wisdom that I consider worthy of expression. To this day, it’s a place I have to go to, as often as possible, or I will feel lost.

 My work lives in galleries, museums, and cultural spaces around the world. But where my work is born is in the wild, far from the trappings of human civilization. I have to bear witness to nature’s vast diversity and endless variations. I have to immerse myself in its elegant logic, and its subtle but undeniable fabric of interconnection. I follow my intuition and gather fragments of what I find there, following no plan or preconceptions.

 Once I return to my studio, the next stage of my artwork’s life begins. What I have gathered with my camera, which seemed so random, slowly reveals its purpose. And there is always a purpose. The tools that I use at this stage are somewhat artificial, inorganic, created by the digital, virtual world. The truths that they reveal, though, are those of the natural, organic world, the world that made us.

 As with any parent and child, learning comes through conversations, through questions finding answers. My works welcome viewers to participate in these conversations. If we’re willing to listen, nature can guide us to our own paths and purposes, and to the peace inside ourselves that is the truest freedom. This is what I need to find, and to celebrate, and to share.

— Ysabel LeMay