Michele Cormier’s life aquatic

Though painter Michele Cormier moved to Bethesda two years ago, her French-Canadian roots come through in her command of both elemental contemporary abstracts and naturalistic landscapes and water paintings. You can find samples of each in Color, Texture, and Mood, her solo exhibition at Touchstone Gallery. Cormier’s ancestors in Barachois, a village on New Brunswick’s east coast, lived off of the sea and land. Her elegant brushstrokes preserve that sense-memory, displaying a stunning ability to replicate in acrylic paint the way light disperses in water.

“My work includes an array of interesting subject matter,” she writes in her artist’s statement, “mostly driven but what captures me at any given moment.” But on the evidence of these paintings, nature isn’t a momentary occupation for Cormier. It’s captivated her for her entire life.