Génération X, Séquence II, 1995

Artist's Statement

Human figure and fragmentation are the two essential aspects of research in my recent artistic processes.

After concentrating for a long period of time on portrait painting, I am now exploiting more and more the possibilities of juxtaposing on canvas heterogeneous elements. Alternating portrait and assemblage, I point out in turn the human element and the objects or symbols without which an individual could not define oneself.

Being a fully engaged artist in this epoch, I am interested in actual cultures and sub-cultures, especially since the encounter with young artists who were punks and skinheads during two workshops at the Banff Centre for the Arts. Opening before me, then, was a large field of exploration in which I still move about, fascinated by the complexity and richness of their cultural world.

My critical look on society leads me to evoke troubling social realities, for example, suicide of youngsters or the Montreal Polytechnic school tragedy (Vigile). I treat some of these dramas in a straightforward fashion as in Un certain soir de mai in which I present racism in a very direct way, using a famous work by Goya as a composition model. I rather love recuperating or recycling art history images, giving a new sense to works which have become genuine cultural icons through the years.

Many of my paintings are about solitude and the lack of communication between human beings: thus I often paint figures enclosed in what seems to be a definite silence, using the walkman as a recurring symbol.

In painting I try to convey the concrete state of the world. "Witness" would be the key word by which I would define my attitude towards art in general.

Thérèse Joyce-Gagnon