Born in Montreal (Canada) in 1960, Michel Belleau explores visual arts at the beat of urban life.  Worked in layers, sometimes with the addition of collages, his paintings reflect his love of music.  The result is an interplay of brighter or livelier colors contrasting with shadows or dark segments, a little like a jazz melody that is sometimes joyous and captivating, sometimes sad or dramatic.  Like a jazz composition, Belleau layers dissonant colors (voices), multiple textures (instruments) and utilizes every possible technique in applying paint to his canvases.

Belleau holds special affection for jazz. "Each canvas is a little world in itself -- a warm and intimate universe that nonetheless is an open window to broader horizons," says Jules Arbec, commenting on Belleau's work at a recent exhibition of the artist.

Like many other painters, Michel Belleau started in landscape, then became interested in engraving. But it is the theme of music that he chose to pursue in his work.  Although he has abandoned the figurative, almost all his paintings incorporate musical instruments. "In the late 1990s, his approach went through a radical transformation and his field of plastic exploration entered a crucial phase. His painting no longer tries to reproduce music -- it becomes music!" explains author Robert Bernier in "La Peinture au Québec depuis les années 1960". It can be suggested that, if we look carefully, these canvases sing to us of Belleau's passion and love for music.