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At full
speed!
One could say that Celine Gignac paints flowers. However,
it is only fair to say that her works present first and foremost a search
for colours, textures and transparency which quickly leave down any
reference to the subject. On thinking it over we do not see flowers anymore,
but a force, a dynamism, and a movement. What her painting communicates is
precisely in the spectator’s imaginary, in its capacity of evocation which
goes well beyond the subject of the work.
Born in Trois-Rivières, Céline Gignac studied in visual
arts in Belgium and at the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières before
settling down on the North Shore, where she took part in several exhibitions
presenting "a simplified work closer to abstract, to the limit of a
figurative work". She then started teaching at the Université du Québec à
Chicoutimi, for the art and craft undergraduate program in Port-Cartier,
Sept-Îles and Baie-Comeau. At the end of the Eighties, she decided to take
up new challenges, she left the North Shore to come to Montréal.
Once installed in Montreal, she worked full time in a
gallery; she then organized artistic events and finally worked for non
profit organizations. Since a few years, she came back to her regular
artistic life.
The technique she utilizes aims rather at using her
creativity than at executing a deliberated gesture. "It is very stimulating
to develop our creativity. On the one hand, you can appreciate a skilful
technique in a good figurative work that brings a lot of emotion; on the
other hand, exactly in the same manner, you can appreciate an expressive
abstract that holds it all together. A good painting is foremost an
aesthetic set-up, no matter if you choose a unique or a multiple point of
view; it does not matter if you refer or not to the form."
Céline Gignac does not really paint flowers: "I do not
seek to paint flowers. I paint forms. Flowers are a pretext. They are not
real flowers, either. It is more about a movement, of a large gesture, a
work on the colour, textures." Moreover, in her more recent works, the
flowers tend to disappear more and more: the center explodes and nothing
remains but the movement, the colour...
And she also paints on bigger and bigger canvas: as the
flower disappears, the canvas becomes larger; a little like if the forms,
now free from the subject, wanted to extend outside the framework.
Curiously, it is for Céline a coming back to the abstraction: "As a young
artist I painted abstracts, and now I’m back to it..."
"In the first place, I spread the colour and it brings
much emotion, the gesture is large. Then, I step back and I analyze: which
are the strongest lines, the points of force, major or minor... thus, all
the references to the laws which support the structure and the composition
of the work in evolution? Then, I build from there... I’m always back with a
full and large movement... I never use short strokes: only large
movements..."
Just like any professional artist, Céline Gignac has a
solid artistic background which proceeds of the analysis and a thorough
knowledge of art notions. But it is important to leave aside the analysis
and the thoughts when comes the time to paint: "When I paint, I am in total
freedom, I am not in for the analysis: sometimes I can take an analytical
glance at the structure of the work and make essential choices, and
sometimes return in myself and let go completely to a spontaneous experiment
where reflection has no place... These are two worlds in alternation which
you should avoid living at the same time. Ultimately, all that will remain
on the canvas is the artist choice."
Like many artists before, Céline Gignac understood that
emotion conveys something beyond the subject. It is what makes it possible
to the spectator to make up his own interpretation, precisely because he is
challenged by the emotion, because he understands with his own emotion,
rather than by the subject of the canvas. In that way the work of Celine
Gignac is truly an opened work, to take over the concept of Umberto
Eco, for whom the real artist can support several possible readings of his
work from the spectator. "As soon as the center of the flower is removed,
the spectator sees it disappearing.. His interpretation is then free from
the subject."
Taking part in solo and group exhibitions, in Montérégie,
Europe or United States, Céline Gignac continues to follow a double career
as a painter and a studio leader. Her art approach is in constant evolution.
Which direction will it take? "I do not choose my art, it is my art which
chooses me. I let myself be guided by my creative istinct and I cannot say
with exactitude where that will carry me out. I only know that I will be
experimenting all my life."
A dynamic artist, Céline Gignac sails on the agitated
waves of creation with uncommon self-confidence. The direction she will take
doesn’t matter, she will go... At full speed!
Excerpt from an article published by André
Chapleau in Communiqu'Art, July 2008
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