Geneviève Lemarchand

Home Is Where the Art Is

Geneviève Lemarchand lives in a beautiful house on the Sunshine Coast, filled with art and light and surrounded by trees and flowers. There was nothing but forest on the property when she and her husband bought it; Geneviève, an architect, designed the house, which took its shape from the landscape, with angles and skylights and open sightlines that bring the outdoors in. “From every room you look into the garden,” she says. “The house without the garden would not be the house it is, and the garden needs the house to exist.”

Art and beauty are part of her life, found in the paintings she creates of the trees outside her windows – portraits that capture their myriad shades of green, the way the light falls in between them, and how the branches dance with one another in the wind. Observing the connections between things, learning about the diversity and complexity of life, nourish Geneviève’s soul as well as her mind. She finds these themes reflected in the programming on Knowledge, whether it’s the psychology of how characters in a mystery program deal with different situations and relate to each other, or insight into different countries in the world, which in turn grows understanding about the roots of people who’ve come to live in Canada.

It was shortly after moving into their house in 1996 that Geneviève became a Knowledge Partner, and she encourages others to do the same. “Where else can you get such an education, for such little money? You have to pay for your milk and butter. Why not give to Knowledge, which nourishes your brain?”