Marie Josee Leroux Biography

Lerou, a pseudonym of Marie-Josee Leroux, was born in Montreal, Canada in the 1960s. She took classes at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Québec, studied Art & Literature at Cegep de Levis-Lauzon and studied History of Art and Creative Writing at Université Laval in Quebec City. 

After teaching visual arts to children, she worked as an engraver and screen printer for Publicité Latulippe in Ste-Foy, before working as an engraver for Martin Pontbriand in Sillery, and then at Western T. in Vancouver, where she lived for two years.

Back in Montreal, she worked for Paul Labelle, a photographer. She then discovered an interest in theatre and singing. This led her to a few small television roles and to the production of a show using her own songs, which she performed under the pseudonym Marie Soledad, in the small theatres of Montreal

In 1992, she wrote the song that would represent Canada at the prestigious OTI Song Festival in Valencia, Spain. In 1997, she performed a selection of her own songs at Ma Petite Place des Arts in Montreal.

Drawing, painting, engraving, writing, photography, poetry, music, singing, drama, Lerou explores all of these art forms to express her creativity.

But when Lerou started carving stone, she discovered her true calling and invested herself in it with passion. Uncertain of her purpose in life, Lerou finds her way in the stone. Time eludes the living making a person’s lifetime on this Earth short whereas the stone silently witnesses the passing of the millennia. The stone is a gentle presence that evokes a profound song.

“The stone whispers a secret to me, so I rasp, I dig, I seek, I carve to find it” says Lerou who doesn’t hesitate working for several months on one piece. “The stone becomes a mirror to explore my unconscious mind. The characters that emerge from my work are strange beings, sometimes gods and goddesses that belong to my personal history and its quest for eternity.”