Every morning, while the household is still asleep, Manon Lavoie goes to drink her coffee in the small glass alcove of her workshop, on the second floor of her house in Mont-Saint-Hilaire. Sitting at her small work table, she takes the time to write down a few thoughts in her personal journal while watching nature gradually awaken around her.
“It’s like I’m in a treehouse. In summer, I am surrounded by greenery. When it’s still dark and I only light a small lamp, it’s a magical place to watch the sun rise,” says this mother of three grown children. “These moments, for me, are a parenthesis of suspended time in a world that turns too quickly. »
Manon Lavoie’s workshop indeed seems endowed with a magical power, that of plunging its occupants into an imaginary world, as soon as you open the door.
With its tables strewn with artistic materials, its walls covered with drawings and collages, its bookcases filled to the brim with books and topped with green plants, this room flooded with sunlight seems to give access to a dreamlike universe. You immediately feel at home there, as if you had found a dream place.
PHOTO MARTIN TREMBLAY, THE PRESS
In Manon Lavoie’s studio, collages on the wall
“It’s a reflection of who I am and my work,” says this coach in creativity and positive psychology.
This workshop is my cocoon, but it is open to others. It brings together things that are part of who I am. It contains nothing precious or beautiful just to look good. Everything here is of some use to me.
Manon Lavoie
She adds, looking both thoughtful and amused as she looks at the mixed media works that adorn her walls: “I feel like a teenager with my collages on my walls. It’s like I was in my room when I went to high school. »
Create for pleasure
PHOTO MARTIN TREMBLAY, THE PRESS
A visual arts class atmosphere reigns in the workshop.
An art class atmosphere reigns in this workshop with its cathedral ceiling. Sheets painted in bright colors, or simply penciled, pile up on the work table and on the shelves, among the brushes and tubes of paint. Each of these pieces of paper contains creative value in the eyes of Manon Lavoie.
“There is no such thing as a bad design,” says the latter. “We can take a small piece of it and integrate it, with other small pieces, into something larger which will become beautiful. It’s like life. »
Manon Lavoie bases her work on the theory of flow (flow in English) by Hungarian-American psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, as well as on the stress reduction program based on attentive presence (also known as “mindfulness”) by American doctor Jon Kabat-Zinn. She offers online training and closed retreat seminars.
PHOTO MARTIN TREMBLAY, THE PRESS
The studio of the artist Manon Lavoie, her favorite room
I teach women to unleash their creativity to discover themselves. They create for the simple pleasure of creating, not to look beautiful.
Manon Lavoie
A huge (and magnificent) collage, which covers an entire wall of her studio, perfectly illustrates the approach she advocates. There are magazine images of all kinds, symbols and printed words, all arranged aesthetically, but in an order that seems random.
“This is what we call a table of visioning. It allows you to let meaningful images come to you through your body,” explains M.me Lavoie, who sees above all the creative act as a path towards resilience and well-being.
Sewing as an outlet
PHOTO MARTIN TREMBLAY, THE PRESS
Manon Lavoie found herself in the creative gesture.
An old sewing machine table takes pride of place among the workshop’s miscellaneous furniture. “It symbolizes my return to myself. The beginning of everything,” confides the former marketing and communications specialist for a large company.
It was in fact through this sewing machine, which belonged to her grandmother, that Manon Lavoie became aware of the need for a change in life.
“I was pregnant with my first child at the time. I didn’t know how to use this machine, but I felt a fierce desire to learn. One day I said to myself “this is where it’s happening”. I threaded a needle and started sewing squares of beautiful fabric. Without any reason, without wanting to do anything useful,” she says, remembering the tremendous liberating feeling of the moment.
“It was an outlet. I was completely focused on the needle and the fabric moving forward. I later learned that I had reached the flow », continues the one who then began to sew without restraint pockets, pennants, bags and quilts “just to honor [sa] creativity “.
Nearly 20 years later, through the magic of the internet, Manon Lavoie brings hundreds of women of all ages into her sunny studio. She shows them, day by day, to abandon the idea of performance to just be themselves. “I welcome them into my cocoon,” concludes Manon Lavoie.
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