Artist finds healing, beauty in her work

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 23/11/2020 (2125 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

As Monique Coté turns 55 this month, she celebrates a lifetime of art-making and continues to move forward with her passion for creating beautiful things.

Born in Winnipeg into a creative family, the Southdale artist has been exploring various art forms since early childhood.

“I started with dance at age FOUR. Then I started writing stories and poetry in elementary school,” said the married mother of one son, two step-children, and four cats.

“My mom had a ceramic shop in our basement, then she moved it out of the house and I began working for her full time at age 16,” she explained.

“I was always very creative and in the shop learned and taught many paint and glazing techniques as well as porcelain doll painting. We brought floral design into our shop, as I had a knack for it. I continued that in my line of work for over 34 years, long after mom closed her shop in 1990,” Coté said.

Coté’s interest in flowers extends into her passion for gardening and is ever present in her antique-wood framed art pieces stencilled with an array of blooms and blossoms. Coté designed wedding headpieces and costume headdresses while working for Harlequin Costumes in the early ’90s and even designed the hats for a production of My Fair Lady.

She also taught and performed belly dance for over eight years and designed her own costumes for that as well.

The self-taught artist paints in acrylic and recently began working with watercolours.

“I still like painting in acrylics on canvas but mostly for myself. Water colours I keep to my art therapy. But my thing right now is my collage work on reclaimed vintage or found items. Working with paint, and antiquing and distressing techniques, collaging decor transfers, stencilling,” she said.

Coté has had her share of challenges, and deals with fibromyalgia, complex PTSD and anxiety but making art provides a welcome distraction from chronic pain.

“It lets me channel what I feel into something beautiful. And most of all, it is exciting (and still kind of shocking to me) when people love my work and want to have it for themselves in their homes. My creativity is just such a huge part of who I am, I would be lost without it. It is one of the many sides of me that has helped me keep going at times,” Coté said.

Each of Coté’s pieces is one-of-a-kind, transforming old into new.

“The fact I can look at something old and broken down and see something beautiful in it. See what it can be, work with what I have and what it ‘tells me it is’. To create a piece, I hope, will bring someone happiness. I am proud of that,” she said.

“My art comes from everything I am, everything I was and everything I hope to be. From everything that has happened to me; the great, the good, the bad, the traumatic. I try to be as authentic as I can. I try to bring beauty into (and maybe from) chaos.”

To view or purchase Coté’s art, visit www.facebook.com/moongypsycreations