Robert
Marchessault


Works

Antilles


36’’ x 72’’

Pelican Point


44’’ x 48’’

Willow in Cool Air


40’’ x 48’’

Windigo


64’’ x 64’’

Adriatica


60’’ x 48’’

Alaamara


60’’ x 80’’

Arbre Al Mar


44’’ x 44’’

Cloud Indigo


60’’ x 48’’

Fjord du Saguenay


36’’ x 48’’

Inchio Viola


24’’ x 48’’

Kaian


37 1/2’’ x 57 1/2’’

Kumu


24’’ x 24’’

Lagoa


48’’ x 44’’

Loropetalum


36’’ x 40’’

Mangrove II


54’’ x 44’’

Muskokan


24’’ x 24’’

New Tong


68’’ x 60’’

Omori Omori


48’’ x 42’’

Palma


48’’ x 36’’

Rosy Dawn


40’’ x 40’’

Salix


64’’ x 54’’

Saltito II


30’’ x 30’’

South Dunes


36’’ x 74’’

South Point


22’’ x 48’’

The Bacchae


48’’ x 44’’

TiVert


24’’ x 24’’

Tolani


60’’ x 40’’

Too Far From You


28’’ x 48’’

Trachili


40’’ x 40’’

Tre Gambe


44’’ x 44’’

Umi III


24’’ x 24’’

Varnaskil Spring


24’’ x 48’’

Vientiane


48’’ x 40’’

Windjam II


24’’ x 60’’

Woburn Highland


24’’ x 48’’

Yerba


54’’ x 44’’

Yoshi


60’’ x 48’’


Biography

My painting is an inquiry. I make images as a way of responding to experiences that are important to me. Experiences that help me to understand why I’m in this world often happen when I am outside in large open spaces.

Painted images act as a tool. I respond to the spaces my art suggests. That response is usually non-verbal. I am interested in the experience of non-duality that “getting lost” in big spaces can sometimes produce for me. The paintings have gone through a range of artistic treatments with the recent years seeing a focus on space, light, textures, atmosphere and distance.

My landscape paintings are made from memory, not from on-site drawings or photographs. I use memory as a filtering agent to remove non-essential visual elements. When a work is successful, it must have a sense of poetry.

There is nothing “new” about the way I make art. Jean Baudrillard (one of the gurus of the new ‘Postmodern’ ethos) has said that in the sphere of art, every practice has exhausted itself, and that all an artist can do is “to recombine and play with the forms already produced.” (Steven Best & Douglas Kellner, Postmodern Theory: Critical Interrogations. New York: The Guilford Press, NY., 1991, 128.) With this in mind, I do not seek to make art that is “new”. My art accepts the visual devices handed down to painters and strives to use those as an investigative tool. The “new” that I hope will happen is a new association, understanding or experience for a viewer.

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