Michele Cassou


Michele Cassou is an American painter, teacher and author.

Biography

Cassou, a French-born American citizen, is using painting as a tool for self-discovery, and for exploring the spiritual dimensions of the creative process via the "Point Zero Painting" technique. Her very early paintings are included in the Collection de l'art brut, Jean Dubuffet's collection permanently on display in Lausanne.
She has been teaching since her early twenties, first in Paris, then Canada, Ottawa and Montreal, then in the United States.
Presently she teaches the Point Zero Method under the name Michele Cassou Painting Workshops. She conducts workshops in the San Francisco Area, at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur California, at the New York Open Center and at the Mabel Dodge Luhan House in Taos New Mexico, in various Zen centers and other locations throughout the United States and Europe.

Early life and education

Michele Cassou was born in 1942 in Marseilles, the daughter of a Jewish mother and a father who was a Catholic French officer. The family fled to Morocco during the war, where Michele spent the first three years of her life, not meeting her father until the end of the war. Then with her mother she moved to the town of Hyères on the Mediterranean. She started to draw and paint when she was five years old.
At the age of 14 her growing family, now including seven children, moved to Paris where Michele attended Helen Boucher High School. Shortly before she turned 17 her family moved to Algeria to join her father who was serving as an officer in the Algerian war. Michele finished high school in Algeria. At the end of Micheleʼs last year of high school the family moved back to Paris.
She subsequently enrolled in traditional Parisian art classes and joined , a free expression studio for children, created and run by :fr:Arno Stern|Arno Stern. She remained at the studio for almost four years, where she also came into contact with Krisnamurti through his books, which have influenced her life and teaching. She began teaching painting in her early twenties.
Michele was married in the early 1960s and in 1965, gave birth to her only son, Phillipe.
During the 1968 student uprisings in Paris Michele was asked to paint a huge mural in one of the amphitheaters of La Sorbonne.
Within a few years the family moved to Canada. After seven years of marriage, divorced, Michele returned to the South of France for a year. In a small village Nans les pins, she studied Yoga and meditation. She then moved back to Canada, and soon after the United States where she settled in California.
In 1978, she founded The Painting Experience Studio in San Francisco. This studio offered classes and workshops year round for 11 years; in 1996 The Painting Experience Studio closed and its name moved to different teachings. She continues to paint and teach workshops, write and train teachers in the Point Zero Method throughout the United States and Europe.

Transformative work

Cassou and her work have received praise by other artists and authors.
According to her own words, "I can never possess my painting, I have to rediscover it every time. I can never say that I know how to paint, because there is no way to grasp it, the only thing I can do is forget what I know." She also explained that "Now is the time to put the last stroke on the painting. I let myself slide all the way into it. I feel its full embrace. I stand in the most intimate fashion, in the closest possible way, at the center of my own passion. I am ecstatic. God's beauty fills me. My soul is full."

Additional references in books

May 2010 w/ host Dr. Carol Stalcup
Author and Workshop Facilitator Michele Cassou Teleseminar.
"If you do not listen to your intuition, it will stop talking to you. Your intuition is like a sensitive friend. If you question it, censor it, judge it, it gets hurt and becomes silent."

Exhibitions

Books