Kathia Lagacé-Nadon

The Creativity of Absence

I have never been interested in remaining the same.

Life has a way of transforming us, sometimes quietly, sometimes beyond recognition. What we experience, what we lose, what we remember, and what we struggle to understand continually reshape our perception of the world.

My work grows out of this constant state of transformation.

I am fascinated by the space between what we feel and what we can explain. By the contradictions of being human, our longing for simplicity, our need to make sense of things, and our extraordinary ability to imagine beyond what is given to us.

I think of this as the creativity of absence.

Absence is not necessarily emptiness. It can be the absence of certainty, of understanding, of something that once existed, or of something that has yet to take shape. Within these undefined spaces, imagination finds its freedom.

Through painting, I construct and deconstruct worlds where tenderness coexists with absurdity, where humour softens the weight of existence, and where the familiar becomes strangely unfamiliar.

I do not create to arrive at conclusions. I create to explore what remains unresolved, to give form to what cannot always be named, and sometimes, simply to make life feel a little lighter.

Perhaps what interests me most is not what is missing, but everything that becomes possible because of it.