Heavily textured Impasto palette knife oil painting inspired by the Autumn foliage in the Laurentian Mountains of Québec

Johanne Brouillette

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Evoking a sense of place and imbued with intense raw emotion and quiet tranquillity, Johanne Brouillette’s paintings are visual poems, an allusion to landscape, a suggestion of time or personal life experience based on colour and sensory details. Technically, the work is non-representational, but to say this would be a disservice to the countless natural inspirations in her daily life. Each painting is created in a spontaneous, gestural, expressionistic style, yet references the highly influential Canadian landscapes around her. She enjoys observing seasonal changes, allowing different textures, colours and shapes of trees and leaves influence her work. Intuitively, she begins with improvised layers of colour and marks. Then the slow painting process begins. It can take weeks, months or even years of building and breaking down the surface of a piece until the artist is completely satisfied. Rarely using brushes, the artist prefers the physical act of moving, scraping and removing oil paint with palette knives and handmade tools. Working on several paintings at any given time, she moves from one to the other, rotating them as she goes. This method enables her to develop the pictorial space as she works the painting deeper onto the canvas creating a multi-layered composition of colour, balance and light. The use of cold wax, marble dust, wood ashes and oil sticks helps her achieve a richer, textured surface. Each painting can go through many lives or “seasons”, changing drastically during the process, depending where the artist’s inspiration takes her on any given day. Led by her passion and visually influenced by Québec Automatistes painters such as Riopelle, Borduas and Ferron, Brouillette has found freedom of expression in abstraction pursued through automatism and strives to create art that is fresh and uniquely her own. « I hope is that my abstract paintings hint at something familiar, yet remain open ended to allow the viewer’s imagination to complete the story. ». Her work is represented in galleries and both private and corporate collections worldwide. A few notable one’s are the Montreal Neurological Hospital, Alzheimer Society of Canada, Jean Lapointe Foundation in Montreal, Principal Financial Group, Des Moines, USA, Merchants Bonding, West Des Moines, USA. She currently lives and works in the Laurentians with her husband and two small dogs.