Biography

Johanne Brouillette is a Canadian abstract painter who has been living and working out of her studio located in the Laurentian Mountains for over 28 years.

Following close to 20 years painting in a representational landscape style, Johanne began studying pure abstraction and immediately connected with the style of the Automatistes painters such as Riopelle, Borduas and Ferron. She has found freedom of expression in abstraction pursued through automatism: an instinctive, unpremeditated form of creating art, and has created a fresh language all her own.

Brouillette is a jury elected member of the Society of Canadian Artists and the Federation of Canadian Artists. Her abstract paintings have been included in over 80 regional, national and international juried exhibits and have been awarded several prizes. In 2020, the Society of Canadian Artists awarded her the prestigious Antoinette Stevens Medal “Best in Show”. Her artworks have appeared in several publications including House & Garden magazine in the United Kingdom, Spotlight Contemporary Art Magazine in France and Art Folio Annual in the United States.

Her work is represented in galleries and both private and corporate collections worldwide. A few notable one’s are the Montreal Neurological Hospital, Alzheimer Society of Canada, Jean Lapointe Foundation in Montreal, Principal Financial Group, Des Moines, USA, Merchants Bonding, West Des Moines, USA.

She currently lives and works in the Laurentians with her husband and two small dogs.

Artist Statement

My large-format abstract paintings are imbued with intense raw emotion and quiet tranquility. Technically, the work is non-representational, but to say this would be a disservice to the countless natural inspirations in my daily life. Each painting is created in a gestural, expressionistic style, yet references the highly influential Canadian landscape around me.

Nature has always been a part of my life, most notably my summers spent at our family waterfront cottage in the Laurentians. I enjoy observing seasonal changes, allowing different textures, colours and shapes of trees and leaves to influence my work.

My paintings are created with thick multilayered, heavily textured oils that can take weeks, months and even years of building. I rarely use brushes, preferring the physical act of moving, scraping and removing paint with palette knives. The painting can go through many lives or “seasons”, changing drastically during the process, depending where my inspiration takes me. My hope is that my abstracted landscape paintings hint at something familiar, yet remain open ended to allow the viewer’s imagination to complete the story.

”I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way – things I had no words for.”

Georgia O’keeffe

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