À sa guise — On its own terms unfolds through gestures that seem to choose their own direction. Forms intersect, break apart and emerge elsewhere, creating an abstract composition driven by freedom of movement without surrendering its underlying structure.
At the heart of the painting, oxidized earth tones and deep near-blacks meet muted ochres and mineral blue-grays. Their density gradually gives way to expansive areas of pale, quiet space. Some passages carry the immediacy of a decisive mark, while others appear partially erased or suspended beneath translucent layers. This constant movement between presence and disappearance gives the work its distinctive rhythm.
Strong dark gestures anchor the composition without containing it. Around them, smaller disruptions emerge: an interrupted line, a scraped surface, an unexpected blue-gray shape, a restrained trace of red. Nothing resolves too neatly. The eye is allowed to move through the painting, linger within its textures and then return to the open, luminous areas surrounding them.
With À sa guise, Canadian contemporary artist Mariclair Plante continues her exploration of poetic abstraction and the tension between spontaneity and control. Acrylic, water-soluble sticks and layered glazes allow previous marks to remain visible beneath later interventions. Rather than concealing its evolution, the painting carries traces of what came before through transparency, accumulation and erasure.
The work resists becoming a landscape or a fixed narrative. Instead, it creates an evolving pictorial field where opposing forces coexist: density and openness, impulse and restraint, matter and light.
On Its Own Terms ultimately speaks to a kind of freedom that does not depend on disorder. It changes direction, resists certainty and remains deliberately unresolved — leaving enough space for each viewer to encounter the work differently.