Jean Gaudreau

Jean Gaudreau (born May 27, 1964) is a Canadian artist, painter and engraver. He is considered one of the most influent contemporary painters in the province's capital (Capitale-Nationale).
In 2008, he was immortalized as one of the most notorious figures of Quebec's contemporary art by Robert Lepage during the celebrations for the 400th anniversary of the  foundation of Quebec City. In his animated film "Le Moulin à images", Robert Lepage projected images of artworks by Jean Gaudreau next to works from Jean-Paul Lemieux, Martin Bureau, Jean-Paul Riopelle et Alfred Pellan, among others, on grain silos located in Anse au Foulon, in Quebec City's old port.
Biography.
Gaudreau was born in Quebec City on May 27, 1964. When he's 10 years old, his mother, Claudia Tremblay, a plastic art teacher, musician and painter, entrust her son to Sister Alice Pruneau to teach him the basics of drawing, at the "Séminaire des Pères Maristes" in Quebec City. As a child, he learns the "old fashion way'’ the "Mezzotint" as well as the importance of geometry in drawing. Indeed, Pruneau teaches him the rules of perspective, the vanishing points as well as the Golden Triangle.  The painter's mother also played a dominant role in the apprenticeship of her son's plastic practices. She herself would become multidisciplinary artist Jean Palardy's student.
Between Tradition and Modernity (1974–1985).
When he is 12 years old, Jean paints genre art scenes in Quebec's old port. He thus sketches his first subjects : the stevedores, the boats, the docks, the river and in the background, the buildings perched on Quebec City's headland, the cap Diamant. He outlines, in the manner of the countryside landscape painters, the contours of the old buildings. The Château Frontenac, the Séminaire de Québec, Price Building, are some favourite subjects of the passionate teenager, and as such, premonitory subjects. For instance, this painting view of the Bassin Louise "Les remorqueurs" (The stevedores) precedes by some thirty years playwright and filmmaker Robert Lepage's "Le Moulin à images". In 2008, the Jean Gaudreau's  artworks are to be projected on some huge grain silos at the Anse au Foulon among those of other great painters in the history of Quebec City. 
Isle-aux-Coudres.
Until 1985, the paintings or rural landscapes in Charlevoix are a curiosity for denizens and tourists of L'Isle-aux-Coudres. The summers of the artist's youth, are spent painting landscapes, up to one to two hundred a year. His paintings are sold outside a famous hotel of the island. "Jean Gaudreau paints using oil, acrylic and oil pastels which he masters and harmonizes with both fervour and subtlety." It is a significant period for the teenager, who regularly visits the artist painter Jean Paul Lemieux. The older man is always ready to underline to young Jean Gaudreau the importance of the drawings in the practice of painting. "At 17 years old, Jean Gaudreau presents his first solo exhibition in an art gallery, and he has since been seen regularly in solo or group exhibitions. Hundreds of his paintings were acquired by private or public collections, and several mural painting experiments will give way to more important commissions." 
The Artist's Approach.
Painter, sculptor and engraver, the Quebec City's artist explores several technical means and approaches them not separately like so many individuated vehicles of expression, but rather like a gathering of manners, a single whole body baring the advantage of maximizing a frenzied expression, and all-consuming passion. Jean Gaudreau morphs into an acrobat at our own expenses to create flaming visual orgies. The artist borrows his iconography from the circus's syntax, the grammatical codes of dance and the plastic arts' vocabulary.
"Chance encounters and the very spirit of his artistic production have led Gaudreau to associate, for many years, dance and performance art to his painting. Both by the themes he tackles and in the conception of the many events he put together, the body has become a central element of his work. In his compositions, the artist plays with elaborate staging, where characters borrowed from the circus and the dance world, sometimes moving  other times remaining still,  blend into various forms to create an open and animated space. Colour, thus far confined to a supporting role, becomes in this series, an essential foundation of the ensemble, without, however, falling into a purely decorative dimension. A particularly effective accomplice, it acts as a trigger."
The use of the epithet multidisciplinary to introduce this creator, merges with the appropriate cross-disciplinary one. Jean Gaudreau sculpts the raw matter in a diligent manner, a rigour born of a vast workshop experience, bending his back, kneading the surfaces and twisting the supports. This all-crazy labour demonstrates his mastering of colour combinations, impressionist gesture and, above all, his careful attention towards the planarity of the canvas. The artist cannot stand the lightness of emptiness, or the  mundane of everyday life. The large canvases shown in 2003 in the Cirque du Soleil's headquarters bear witness to this; loaded surfaces, busy, choked, bruised and nervously piled.
"Through M-515, Jean Gaudreau  has etched  the profile of a chalky face marred by the end of the day glowing tears on the crimson hue of a quivering sea. A long line stretched between two moribund abandoned in a vacuum, toggles this head in the nocturnal strangeness of the world.
The thick strokes of blue, red or yellow are childhood memories, landscape from within, pieces of history, in short, Quebec City-specific colours. "If, like says artist Leng Hong, "painting the body's landscapes or painting the skin of dreams is always sketching our interior landscape," then Gaudreau's interior landscape is rather fascinating. The elements of his work, parts taken from the universal subconscious, assemble deftly on the canvas like a puzzle."
He constantly revisits, almost with obstinacy, this welcoming and volcanic maelstrom, by stacking up material layers, painting gestures, delicate sketches, violent strokes, controlled soft hedges, visual oxymorons characterized by fine droplets or by  harsh movements, articulated by a swift arm throwing moods, odours and mental landscapes on the canvas.
"He is without a doubt,  a singular figure of the Quebec visual arts world. Firstly, because he has a lot of grits and boldness. Also and especially because he earns a living with his painting, which is in itself quite exceptional. He has surrounded himself with patrons, collectors and art enthusiasts. His artwork travels to Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal and  New York galleries. He earns a living with his art, but let us be clear. He has chosen this frugal and precarious way of life like so many other creators. Jean Gaudreau defines his painting as intuitive. His approach favours emotion, subjectivity, even the expression of the 'unconscious.' He is also inspired by dance and movement; his painting is therefore very gestural."
In the stubborn, fallible and lyrical painter's vivacious historiography, the will power, elation of the artist, this  uncompromising mistress is the all mighty goddess. The young painter inspired by Riopelle or Lemieux, whom he frequented from the first hour, worships more than he dares pretend. A universe inhabited by dance, theatre, painting, history, sculpture and performance, feeds the creations and he drinks it up tirelessly, as an inexhaustible source of inspiration. Indeed, Jean Gaudreau takes advantage of fragments of love,  as so many imprints of the past infringing on  the present. He leaves traces in his artwork as fragmented sediments, mandatory rites of passage rituals for  him, seeking endlessly to reinvent himself, like a stubborn and unfailing Sisyphus. 
"The brush strokes recall Riopelle, Pollock, Stella, Klimt and Ferron ; some traces evoke the Automatists and the flights dear to the lyrical abstracts. Admittedly, the artist avails himself of a postmodernism that tends to integrate all streams as bare witnesses the presence of figurative and non-figurative elements, women with lascivious faces, sinuous lines and the juxtaposition of vibrant hues and gilding. The predominant gestural as well as the intentionally less than finished and more primary aspect of his painting constitute trials at forging a personal style."
Second life.
Jean Gaudreau started his exploration of copper with the help of remains of the South turret of the Château Frontenac. After mastering the transformation technic of these pieces, that artist embedded them in his paintings thus giving them a second life.
"By using a material out of the past—the copper—transforming it into a contemporary character, the artist explores what could be described as the point of metamorphosis of the medium, trying to answer questions such as 'What happens when these remains begin a new  life?' ‘What happens when the past and the present become one and the same?' Asked about his choice of the iconography of the heart as subjects in his recent creation, Jean Gaudreau states : 'I have chosen the shape of the heart, timeless symbol of love, to express this transition between past and present. Past and presents are the two beats of a same heart.'"