The Woman That Wears Many Hats
Artist, designer, and TV personality, Manon LeBlanc creates whimsical, dreamlike worlds for you to live in. She finds beauty to be endless, ever-changing, and above all,- imperfect.
INTERVIEW WITH MANON LEBLANC
MANON LEBLANC
From the designer’s archives
LES COULEURS: What is your dream project?
MANON LEBLANC: My dream project would be to simply continue what I am already doing.
I am able to say that I am living my dream. In the future, I would like to make more international contacts and work with different designers. I love meeting new people and working on interesting projects with them. Here in Miami, I would like to collaborate with local architects and designers on their projects that would include my murals.
LC: What’s your background?
ML: I have always been an artist. My interest in painting and sculpture started a very young age. I like working with a variety of mediums, it's been a natural thing for me. I went to the school of Beaux-Arts, that's where I got my start and got involved in the interior design, then became a designer and a personality in several TV shows in Quebec and also in France.
LC: Name three designers you’d like to be compared to.
ML: Philippe Starck, because every interior design that he creates, reflects a story he is aiming to tell. I love Ralph Lauren for his chic and timeless perspective. I also adore Deborah Oppenheimer for her modern, chic, yet peaceful interiors.
LC: Tell us about your current collaborations?
ML: About 80% of my collaborators are designers or architects that invite me to participate in their projects. I work a lot in Canada with design firms as a collaborator with my murals and wallpaper. I adapt the formats to their walls and their shapes, for residences or hotels, etc. Private owners also contact me directly for their residences, and for a few months now, I have been having a lot of designers and private owners surprisingly from Chicago. I guess sometimes it just takes one person to spread the word!
Gloire
From the designer’s archives
LC: How would you define beauty in 140 characters or less?
ML: Beauty for me is the interpretation of a subject, the way we see it. I am always curious to see what every person finds beautiful and that is what makes the world so surprising and wonderful and that is why I love to travel! What I also find very special is that, over the years, our perception of beauty changes, we love things that we used to find ugly, that is beauty, it is endless and above all imperfect!
LC: Do you interact with the digital world/technology in your work?
ML: Yes, in fact my murals are the result of an artwork, a photo, or a reproduction of a work of art that has gone into software and graphics which allows me to add textures and multiples effects so that I can further enhance the beauty of the subjects.
LC: What kind of music are you listening to currently? Name 5.
ML: Jazz, classic, pop, R&B, unplugged.
LC: If you could work within a past art movement, which would it be?
ML: If I have to refer to a period of art, it would be the Art Nouveau period because it is very decorative, asymmetrical, and often vegetal, which is my favorite subject.
LC: Which artist of the past would you most like to meet?
ML: Michelangelo, for his intelligence and his multiple talents, and his brilliant mind. With each project, he created the most outstanding masterpiece of the Renaissance.
LC: Can you tell us about the process of making your work?
ML: For me, a mural is a story, the mood . . . so to start the design I go by imagining myself where my future mural would go, and what ambiance I am trying to create.…. modern, eclectic, fun, retro, chic . . . who is it for, what type of person would relate to it. When I am ready, I research the images, colors, and textures and start working on my computer.
For me, a mural can be a complementary element in a room to establish the mood, or even the highlight of the room so I tend to work keeping all that in mind. When I achieve the result I am looking for, I do multiple prints to test a variety of papers to get to the colors and the texture that I am looking for.
Papier Japonais Noir
From the designer’s archives
Médaillon Anthracite
From the designer’s archives
Paraiso Verde
From the designer’s archives
Floral Drama
From the designer’s archives
Samara
From the designer’s archives
