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A half a century for painter Benoît Côté
The Energy of the Snow Goose Captured on Canvas
It is a beautiful October day when painter Benoît Côté welcomes us into his Saint-Pierre home and agrees to share some of the highlights of his artistic career with us. He first recalls his beginnings at the Zanettin Gallery in 1960 and his European Tour on a Greenshields Foundation Grant. He then takes us through the demanding preparations for his Black is Beautiful exhibition, a colourful tribute to his Caribbean friends. With an easy half smile, the alert, bright-eyed painter, now in his seventies, unaffectedly entertains us with delightful tales from the past. Through the course of his career, he has met with Dallaire, Riopelle, Claude Picher, Lemieux and many others of our great painters. His souvenirs linger on Riopelle, a geese-hunting neighbour on nearby Ile-aux-Grues: “Riopelle might not have been a great hunter of the geese, but he was totally captured by their beauty!” Mr. Côté, who sees in Riopelle our greatest international artist, is proud to have been the first of them to paint snow geese, long before Riopelle ever thought of it.
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Deeply-rooted on Ile d’Orléans since 1960, he lives in an old stone-house, exquisitely decorated, filled with antiquities and art collections expertly picked-out along the years. A stairway leads to the studio, where light flows in through a large window with a view on the island’s bridge. Numerous paint brushes in combat order and millions of particles of paint splashed over the easels testify to the effervescence of this haven of high-creativity.
If Benoît Côté’s early subjects were quite eclectic, going from urban sceneries, schooners and even perky little nuns, it is later on in his career that he took up the challenge of painting the vibrations, impulse and movement released by a flight of snow geese. He was touched by their grace one day as he was hunting at Pointe d’Argentenay, the north tip of the island. A flight of these great birds passed by at close range, calling to each other and flying in a burst of powerful energy. Ever since, his aim has been to transfer this energy on canvas. This is why, for many years now, snow geese have been at the heart of his artistic approach. In front of the blank canvas, Benoît Côté lets his hand freely sketch out fluid lines. His mind is totally focused and, step by step, a painting takes shape. What we have here is “vibratory art”. One must see his “Vibrant Clouds” bringing to life a flock of geese whose lines and colourings blend with autumn mists. “None of my geese can fly” declares the painter, humorously. True, but he does manage to show off the life and impulse that drive them. What we see on canvas is freedom, lightness and powerful movement rather than scientifically true-to-life geese. These birds can fly off to outer space, in a cheerful chaos, taking us along with them.
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At the end of the afternoon we find ourselves on the terrace, enjoying a glass of wine, surrounded by trees, each one of them lovingly planted by the artist, when he confides to us that “art has saved him from boredom and has taught him to see beauty, whether it is in a scenery, a piece of furniture or a …woman”. His wife joins in the laughter, the little dog rests in his master’s arms and the autumn sun is still warm. Time has stopped, simply to let us savour the joy of living.
(Translated from an article in Journal Autour de l’Ile, November 2007, page 12, author: Pierre Pruneau)
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