"Artist Francine Gravel captures this world on canvas. With her vivid imagination and philosophical insight she creates paintings and prints which seem as if they have been captured from the pages of children's fairy tales and ancient medieval legends" (Gabriele Scherubl)

As Roger Geerts has observed, "Francine Gravel's work is full of imagination and fantasy. We can feel in it the life of a world not quite our own, a world uplifted. At times the figures give the impression of being more or less absent. They bathe in an atmosphere of magic realism or fantasy. The artist knows how to interpret dreams with a very personal touch. `A dream is a painter,' to quote a famous Belgian author. And this is precisely what is reflected in Francine Gravel's work." (Roger Geerts, art critic, Belgium)

The artist was born and raised in Montreal, Quebec where she attended the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, studying under Albert Dumouchel. She later pursued post-graduate studies in Belgium at the Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp and at the University of Calgary (Alberta).

She was presented in her premiere exhibit of etchings and engravings in 1967 -- an exhibit that launched a career that has continued to grow ever since. In 1980, after a long quest, she discovered the personal style that identifies her as a painter, and she has never looked back.

She now enjoys an international reputation and has collectors throughout the world. She exhibits in numerous galleries throughout Canada where she is frequently featured in one-woman shows.

"Like Paul Verlaine, she seems to be saying, `And above all, there is music." Music is a recurrent theme in her paintings; her figures make music, they sing and dance. Everything in her work emanates from the inner self." (Roger Geerts)