Sylvie Bouchard

Sylvie Bouchard creates and explores an odd and fascinating world of dreamlike symbols and scenarios, in which characters, animals, objects and places gradually phase into existence. Her style draws as much on the western traditions of theatre and theatricality as it does on the fine art movements of symbolism, surrealism and new image painting. Her compositions depict a landscape that is a knowing projection of the faculty of imagination, in itself, beyond understanding and yet uncannily known. The things that seem to happen and to exist there are certainly related to classical archetypes and the contents of human subconsciousness. But a baffling and beautiful sense still retains its arbitrariness in these paintings, a resistance to explanation either by psychology or iconology. Bouchard deploys painterly effects slowly and coolly, mining a palette of chromatic greys, producing an imagery that slowly unfolds its loveliness as well as its more profound implications over time.

Sylvie Bouchard lives and works in Montreal. She studied visual arts at the University of Ottawa and has been an active painter in Montreal since the early 1980s. Her work has been presented in institutional exhibitions, including a retrospective show at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, and solos at the Musée régional de Rimouski and the Southern Alberta Art Gallery in Lethbridge. She has taken part in exhibitions across Canada and abroad, among them at Occurrence, Galerie McClure, Galerie Chantal Boulanger, Leo Kamen Gallery, Contemporary Art Gallery, Art Gallery of Ontario, Oboro, Galerie d’art de l’Université de Sherbrooke, and Galerie Division. Her work is represented in numerous public collections, including those of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, the Musée régional de Rimouski, the National Bank of Canada, the Royal Bank of Canada, the Canada Council Art Bank, as well as in numerous private collections.