2006 August: Jeremie Bouchard
August 2006
Jeremie Bouchard:
Seeking Convergence in Landscape (first shown with Rebecca Benoit, Wakayama City, Japan in January 2005).
Oils and Watercolour Paintings of Hokkaido, Japan
Solitude and Hokkaido
When we spend some free time visiting galleries or museums, we do so with a sense of freedom from our daily obligations. The experience might bring us to new understanding, or might simply reaffirm previous convictions. But in all cases, time stands still. Words become fewer. Heartbeats grow more regular. This is what I feel when I am buried deep within the Hokkaido landscape.
I come from the Northern part of Quebec, Canada: an agricultural zone, a very old geological environment characterized by its disturbing flatness. Tens of thousands of years ago, the North American landscape was reshaped by massive melting glaciers receding North. Since then, not much has changed, except perhaps a farm here and there, straight roads with few curves, and timid towns. I grew up under immense skies, but there was little for me to find in the horizon. The Northern flatness of my homeland is pregnant with solitude.
When I first arrived in Hokkaido, my first impulse was to see if there were any connections between my native homeland and my adoptive country. I managed to find some similarities between Northern Canadian and Northern Japanese landscapes. Yet common sense soon told me that my emotional response to my new home was different. Whenever I peered through the window of the moving train, my eyes caught new and interesting natural features. I became convinced of this fundamental difference when I reached the seashore near Otaru. That is when I realized I was no longer living on a dry and stable continent, but rather a humid and ever-changing island (my first earthquake experience confirmed this even further). As a painter, it was only a matter of time before I realized how important the Hokkaido landscape was to me and how much it was to change my way of looking at nature. Now, wherever I look, I find something new, something that holds my attention.
I hope these few paintings convey this sense of change, of new discovery, of a solitary mind in a new and fresh world. They are not challenging pictures to look at, for they translate objective reality rather faithfully. Moreover, all of them contain a certain peace which any visitors to Hokkaido can experience firsthand. If I have tried to keep humans out of my landscapes (although some man-made features do appear at time), it is because nature, like art, speaks for itself. It is unique and strong enough to convey a wide range of emotions. It was only recently that I have discovered my preference for cloudy skies, as you can notice in most of these paintings. This simple awareness made me realize that the process of painting reveals more than mere colors and shapes, but also an emotional palette which is only detectable after extended observation.
Solitude is innate. Emotions are not. We can always train our senses to feel new things, and our heart learns to follow. Hokkaido has forced me to expect something in the horizon. In return, it has filled my memory with countless new and intriguing images.
<< Home