Céline Genest

Céline Genest was born in Sherbrooke, Québec, studied Visual Arts and obtained her DEC (Diplôme d’Études Collégiales). She then furthered her studies at l’UQAM in Montreal and completed her Bachelor’s in visual arts at l’Université de Moncton, N.B. In 2018 she moved from Montreal to Charlo, in Northern New Brunswick where she works from her studio.

She started her twenty-five-year career as a CEGEP teacher in fashion illustration and then taught visual arts. Her research and explorations of different mediums and techniques in drawing, painting and colour classes impacted her personal work as an artist. In Montreal, in advanced workshops, she explored watercolour, pastel, stoneprinting, egg tempera, and on a weekly basis she drew from live models.

Her work is based within a sensory point of view from which she elaborates her ideas in series that are similar. Some paintings with more nature evolve in forest surroundings, detailed in highly coloured floral patterns where small human figures support the narrative. In other paintings with a more gestural approach, she paints human subjects overlapping and interfering in blurred atmospheres.

Her work has been displayed in both solo and group exhibits in private and public galleries in Moncton, NB, Montréal, The Laurentians, La Mauricie and Baie-Saint-Paul in Québec. Press coverage includes: L’Acadie Nouvelle, La Presse de Montréal, Magazine Arts and art exhibit catalogues.

Démarche artistique (English to follow)

Mon travail pictural prend forme dans la poésie et la rêverie, qui font naître des images à portée mythique ou symbolique de caractère archétypal, qu’il soit collectif ou individuel.

Ainsi, la métaphore comme style pictural, me permet de transcender la réalité. Par cette approche lyrique, je créer des ambiances voisines du monde des contes, de la mythologie, de scènes théâtrales ou de milieux naturels interprétés. Ces environnements, avec la figure humaine, participent à un dialogue.

À partir d’une émotion initiale, le tableau prend forme et s’achève sur la possibilité de diverses lectures différentes qu’elles soient ludiques, intemporelles, réminiscence de souvenirs. Plutôt que d’imposer un sens défini, je cherche à instaurer un récit implicite, évocateur de tensions et d’énigmes.

Si le fil conducteur de création des tableaux se retrouve sur toute la série, chaque toile représente une histoire autonome, un univers en soi.

Artist Statement

My work is rooted in poetry and reverie, nurturing images with mythical or symbolic resonance whether universal, archetypal, or intimate.

Metaphor, as a visual language, allows me to transcend reality and suggest a space where fairytales, theatre and nature converse with the human figure.

Each painting emerges from an emotion, freely composed of visual elements that invite multiple interpretations: playful, timeless, or evocative of memories. Rather than revealing the painting’s meaning, I seek to create an implicit narrative, imbued with tension and enigma.

Though my creative process remains consistent throughout the series, each canvas affirms itself as an autonomous universe, a story complete by itself.

Moving to New Brunswick

After living as an artist and an art teacher most of my life in Montreal, I moved to Charlo, N.B. where I started to focus on interpretive landscape painting. My first observations amidst nature, especially in the forest, lead me to discover it’s raw chaotic disorder from which gentle beauty arises. The overwhelming feeling of awe as the discovery went on, of small floral details so well combined into one big pattern generated a state of puzzled enchantment.

Inquiring on the subject, I was amazed by the great number of poems, writings, myths, legends and tales to name a few, where the forest is the main constituent. These specific features combined with the floral aesthetics are the basics of my work. The compositions often include planes of water bodies. This permits to balance a busy surface of floral details. Water soothes and suggests moments of poise while mirroring the sky and the environment.

My goal, by choosing the use of bright colours, is to bypass reality and to illustrate a more supernatural or sacred space where by chance, our eyes, wide open, settle upon an unusual light.

- Céline Genest

Céline Genest, CV

Watch Jennifer Pazienza's episode of Gotta Minute? with Céline below: