Jacques Descoteaux
Propeller Member Since 2016
For over 25 years, Jacques Descoteaux was an accountant by day and an artist by night. Although these may sound contradictory, they share many similarities. The accountant and the artist both need structure, discipline, curiosity, an open mind, and a grasp of abstract concepts.
Artist’s Website: https://www.jdcoto.art/
Jacques started drawing and painting in the early 1990s. He has studied with several professional artists and has attended a pastel master class with Wolf Kahn at the National Academy in New York. In Toronto, he studied with artists such as Barry Coombs, Susan Low-Beer, Ewa Stryjnik and Jacqueline Treloar. Also, he comes from an artistic family. Collectively, they all helped him find his voice. From watercolour to pastel to oil paints, his painting style has evolved. Still, it’s always been influenced by his first studies in watercolour. He likes to work in thin, diluted layers of paint.
He spent time in the North, close to James Bay. He loved the simple, stark landscapes and massive skies there. Years later, these would have a definite influence on his paintings. More recently, he was granted two art residencies on the west coast of Ireland as part of the Cill Rialaig Project.
He is inspired by landscape. By the landscape of the North – Northern Canada, Iceland, Ireland, and Scotland. By the big sky. By the sea. His paintings, however, go beyond landscape. They are about memory – the atmosphere, the impression left by a sunset or a sunrise or a midnight sun, by a glance at the clouds or the horizon or the earth or the sea. They are the abstractions of this memory. They are the imagination of this memory. They occasionally surprise you – by the contrast of subtle colour changes and hard, bold lines, bright colours, and black and white. They transport you to imagined places, to imaginary moments. The landscape we thought we recognized has become more ambiguous and mysterious.
Creating art is very much about the journey. Jacques enjoys creating a piece of art—a drawing, a sculpture, a painting, or a photo or a video. His works explore colour, light, rhythms and patterns, movement, and space.
Jacques has volunteered on the board of social justice and arts organizations.
Over the years, he has been privileged to present his work in several solo and group shows in Canada and group exhibitions in New York City. His paintings are in private collections in Canada, the US, and Ireland.
