Michel Picotte
Beyond Borders: Exhibition of Fine Art from Canada
October 2 - October 23, 2009
Reception:
Thursday October 8, 2009 6-8 PM
Press Release
Incredibly joyful and lively, Michel Picotte’s mixed media works combine found objects and a brilliant palette, with words and symbols in an expressive pastiche. Patterns, rapid strokes and dribbles of paint flow across a picture plane that is often segmented into equal parts of two or three. There is a wonderful playfulness and experimental feeling evoked by Picotte’s work, as if the audience and artist are experiencing the full joy of creation for the very first time. The emotive, raucous energies aroused by Picotte’s strong creative independence and romantic disposition have been harnessed into a positive action of art, without digressing into narcissistic storytelling. Instead, audience members are able to muse and wonder at each work; themselves participating in the process of artistic dialogue.
Since the 1970s, his work has been exhibited frequently in group and solo shows throughout North America and Europe. Picotte divides his time between his main studio in Montreal, Canada and another in the countryside outside of Coutances, France.
Artist Statement
For me, painting is sometimes theater, sometimes poetry and always life as my mind constructs it. My painting is always about what is going on in the world that we live in, so as a corollary it should be understood that it is all about what is going on in my mind. Politics and humans are always fascinating and more often than not are very disappointing. Yet I do not conceive art as therapy for this disappointment, for I am in many ways a romantic, an incorrigible optimist. I am very independent so I do the work, I create, regardless of what other people will think of it. I started showing my work at 27 years old, after finishing university. That was 34 years ago, and I am still at it. I intend to continue.
Invitation to the exhibition
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View the catalog page
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Artists in this exhibition
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