Jean-Francois Provost

Born in Ottawa in 1976, Jean-François Provost holds a Bachelor's degree in Visual Arts from the Université du Québec en Outaouais. He has received several awards and honours for his work as a painter and has produced close to twenty solo exhibitions in the last ten years. His work in painting and drawing has been presented in Canada, Austria and Italy. Provost's work can be found in many corporate and private collections in the United States, Canada, Europe and the Middle East.

"Provost's painting evolves through series responding to specific formalist concerns. Drawing, being for the artist a gestural manifestation of the unconscious, plays a determining role in the composition of his paintings. He argues that his approach to drawing and painting "goes far beyond simple execution on a support, in that it requires a detachment from the preparatory drawings, in favour of the composition of the work. The preparatory drawings, executed in a completely automatist manner with Indian ink, graphite and sanguine, then cut out, constitute the embryo of a creation that will be constructed in a completely studied and reasoned manner, according to a logic that respects my questions about space and purification." His work is mainly oriented towards a search for composition through line, depths, mass relationships, gestures and trompe- l'oeil. Provost defines himself, above all, as a visual artist.''

Jo-Anne Bouchard, PhD
Art Historian