L’actualité Magazine – Art Visuels, 15 May 2011 (p. 82-84)
Dessine-Moi Saint-Ex…

By Isabelle Grégoire

In his giant paintings, the personalities of the 20th century unveil their childhood fragility. Portraits of the painter Louis Boudreault, a Quebecois, seduce both collectors in the East and the West. The first thing that strikes you upon entering the Montreal workshop of Louis Boudreault is the noise, an unusual roar in the den of a painter. Electric sander in hand, shrouded in a cloud of white dust, the artist turns to the table above him. The sander smoothes the face of a boy, formed by multiple layers of glued paper and marked in pencil. A boy with features that are vaguely familiar: a serious look, a bit rebellious and the ears, an eight year old Picasso.

The hum stops. The workshop becomes peaceful and "The Black Eagle" of the singer Barbara flies into the vast room. Turning around, dozens of children and young teenagers stare at us. Girls and boys of giant sizes (2.13 m by 1.52 m for the largest), which from the outset give the impression of having already been seen. You then come to recognize them for good by learning their names. Hemingway, Churchill, Kennedy, Disney, Luther King, Piaf, Mao, Hitchcock, Presley ... "Characters who have marked the 20th century and who have marked me," says Boudreault, salt and pepper hair, blue-green eyes. "Their eyes already contain who they will later become."

Destinées, this series, started in 2006, has some 120 works representing 50 personalities of the last century. For each of these portraits, Boudreault recaptures the personalities using an old photo unearthed from the Internet or library after patient research. He hopes to one day find images of Coco Chanel or Barbara as children. Today, collectors of Canadian, American, European and Asian art snap up these original works; prestigious buyers, though Boudreault is silent out of discretion. The year 2011 will further increase the international reputation of the artist, 54-year-old native of Iles-de-la-Madeleine: Destinées is being exhibited for the first time in Paris and Hong Kong, then New York in 2012.

In line with Quebec artists Jean-Paul Lemieux (1904-1990) and Jean Paul Riopelle (1923-2002), Louis Boudreault has a unique vision. "This is an exceptional artist, a free spirit, a maverick" said James D.Campbell, historian, art critic and Canadian author of numerous books on Quebec art, based in Montreal. "It’s only a matter of time: soon, he will be known to a much wider audience." “His work is of interest to important art dealers around the world," says Andrew Lui, owner of Han Art Gallery in Westmount, where Boudreault’s works are sold.

Located in the Belgo building on Sainte-Catherine street, hosting numerous contemporary art galleries, the workshop of Louis Boudreault is a happy mess. Papers are everywhere: rolls of gift wrap and bits of tapestry, 5 cent scraps and luxurious Japanese kozo costing upto 50 dollars a sheet, doilies hug up in a quaint restaurant, 1950's waxed paper recovered from an old convent ... In the middle of the room stands a table from the late 18th century, previously used by a group of 20 monk writers. Acquired by the artist (“for the price of Ikea furniture!") in an auction at Lyon, it now houses a collection of papers, glue pots and other containers of funny wafers that Boudreault nibbles at all day. "I worked in a kindergarten: with pencils, crayons, flour and water glue." Dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, but protecting his hands with surgical gloves; nimble hands that leave time to play on his white piano, high on a corner of the workshop.

The artist views his subjects with an intimate gaze, affectionate, as if he knew them personally. Before his portrait of the Wright brothers, aviation pioneers, still toddlers, I heard Boudreault, laughing: "They did not look reassuring, eh?" About 11 year old Churchill: "No, but what sufficiency!” Or John Lennon of nine years: "It looks like Bush!" Before you play, face "between the Egyptian cat and the bat" Gandhi and the small-eye Spaniel of young Einstein. Dark, malicious or self-assured: whatever their expression, the eyes of each remind us, in a bizarre game of mirrors, that our eyes hardly change over the years.

Son of island shopkeepers, Boudreault was first attracted to the theater. He studied drama in Montreal, then Paris, where he settled in 1978, earning a living with small roles in films and working as a model in the fashion world. But his passion for art had other plans. In 1983 he entered the Ecole du Louvre. He worked hard at the Hotel Drouot, the Mecca of auctions of works of art, the young man discovered two drawings one day signed as a medical prescription. Modigliani was believed extinct since the First World War! "Nobody else had recognized them, he says with sharp emphasis inherited from 20 years of Parisian life. I got them for the equivalent of $1000!"

All his student savings went into this purchase, but the investment proved lucrative. His fabulous story spread quickly throughout the fashion and art world, "A special card!" At 27, his career as a consultant for works of art was launched. For six years he traveled the world selling Picasso, Matisse, Warhol, Utrillo ... While maintaining a luxurious pied-à-terre in Paris: an apartment and office brokerage on Boulevard Saint-Germain that was offered to him to convince him to sell the famous Modigliani.

Then came the exhaustion [ras-le-bol]. "We no longer talked of art, just business.” The urge to paint tormented him. At first, he hung some of his paintings in the office - of monochrome flowers from the series Les jardins - telling his clients that the works were from a "little, beginning, Canadian artist”. The enthusiasm was immediate. In 1993, Boudreault exhibited for the first time in Paris and transformed his office into a workshop.

Subsequent series were acclaimed by both critics and fans. Notably Les envois, which included a reflection on how art was produced during the Renaissance, the colors used to paint the masterpieces of Western painting, a "road of colors" that will cross the convent of spices from the East to the West.

In 1998, weary of Parisian life, Boudreault returned home and became a gallery owner (The Moderns, Cressent Street, Montreal, now closed). While continuing the series of Envois, he began his Souvenirs d’enfance of the Magdalen Islands, which include hundreds of large drawings, and the Porteurs d’oiseaux, inspired by an Inuit legend. The idea of the series Destinées, for him, came during a trip to London in 1997 after the death of Lady Di. "I saw a bunch of newspapers in the gutter with, for one, the photo of Diana as a child. The water ran down her face as time passed and I found it very beautiful." Like the piles of London newspapers, portraits from Destinées appear in three dimensions. The edges are composed of strips of paper waste, which create a thick sham. "The work seems to be stuck on an accumulation of paper leaves, giving the impression that it contains a stratification of previous lives," says James D. Campbell.

The portrait itself also has several layers, resulting from a "palimpsest." (Originally, the manuscript was a palimpsest on parchment made used of which had been erased writing method used by medieval copyists.) On a wooden board covered with white paper, Boudreault first draws the child's face. Then he builds his clothes and his world with layers of colored paper, glue and he returns to the iron before re-sanding to remove the previous layers by transparency. The faded colors and images push us back in time like old memories.

In the "visual biographies" Boudreault’s content and presentation are of equal value, says the art critic John K. Montréal Great. “His works are so completely contemporary.” Though his technique of palimpsest is unique, Boudreault is not the first artist to use cut paper. Matisse (1869-1954) is his most illustrious predecessor, who said to have "drawn with scissors". The artist has a dozen portraits started at the same time, some in multiple versions. "Warhol, Marilyn 1200 well done!” His Picasso, for example, is very popular, like Callas, we discovered two years, playing a lady with the scarf of his mother and wearing a tiara (her portrait graced the cover of novel Bïa Krieger: The revolutions of Marina [Boréal, 2010]). Boudreault can stay in his studio day and night, seven days a week, without seeing the good fortune to spend, mesmerized by the magnetism of his paintings. He is not alone as long as happy students and amateurs are filter through his workshop. Not to mention the many visitors to his website ... In summer, he escapes with his wife to their house in Havre-Aubert, Îles. There he is not working, but rather is exposed to the Café de la Grave, housed in an old general store. It also has a gift shop - The Modern Sea - where the faithful and tourists can choose from hundreds of beautiful items and drawings signed by Boudreault: signed t-shirts, calendars, playing cards… along with cans containing "The winds of the islands". Louis Boudreault will continue Destinées for a few more years. Some famous characters are promised in his Hall of Fame. Quebecers like Felix Leclerc and René Lévesque, among others. With the exception of the iconic French Juliette Greco, 84 years old, who came in to his studio last year in order to give him a childhood photo. Boudreault has, up to now, immortalized that…of the dead. "The living myths do not run the streets!"