Jacques Descoteaux

BIOGRAPHY

For over 25 years, Jacques Descoteaux has had a dual career - as a professional accountant and as an artist – first working in watercolor and pastel, and more recently in oil on canvas and acrylic on paper. The artist also does a bit of sculpture. Over the years, he has studied with a number of artists and at various art schools, including attending a pastel master class with American artist Wolf Kahn at the National Academy in New York City. Jaques was granted art residencies in 2015 and 2019, part of the Cill Rialaig Project, in Co. Kerry, Ireland. He is a member of the Propeller Centre for the Visual Arts and the Al Green Sculpture Studio and School. He has participated in solo and group exhibitions in Toronto, Montréal, and New York. His work can be found in private collections in Canada, the US, and Europe.

ARTIST STATEMENT

Jacques is inspired by the landscape. By the landscape of Northern Quebec, Northern British Columbia, Iceland, Ireland, Scotland. By the big sky. By the sea. His paintings, however, go beyond the landscape. They are about memory - the atmosphere, the impression left by a sunset or a sunrise or a midnight sun. They are the abstraction of this memory. They are the imagination of this memory. They occasionally surprise you - by the contrast of subtle color changes and hard, bold lines, with bright colors and black and white. They transport you to imagined places, to imaginary moments.

NOTE FROM CURATOR

One of our collectors compared Jacques' work to the work of Mark Rothko for the skillful use of formal elements such as colour, balance, depth, and composition in his works. Another collector compared Jacques's works to the works of English Romantic painter Joseph William Turner for the expressive colorizations and imaginative landscapes.