Oil on linen / Huile sur toile de lin

Sylvie Bouchard

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Sylvie Bouchard creates and explores an odd and fascinating world of dreamlike symbols and scenarios, in which characters, animals, objects and places gradually phase into existence. Her style draws as much on the western traditions of theatre and theatricality as it does on the fine art movements of symbolism, surrealism and new image painting. Her compositions depict a landscape that is a knowing projection of the faculty of imagination, in itself, beyond understanding and yet uncannily known. The things that seem to happen and to exist there are certainly related to classical archetypes and the contents of human subconsciousness. But a baffling and beautiful sense still retains its arbitrariness in these paintings, a resistance to explanation either by psychology or iconology. Bouchard deploys painterly effects slowly and coolly, mining a palette of chromatic greys, producing an imagery that slowly unfolds its loveliness as well as its more profound implications over time.