Jacques Descoteaux

I’ve worked in a variety of media, from pastel to watercolour to oil paint, from clay sculpture to stone carving. However, my primary medium is oil paint on canvas.

At a recent exhibition, a gallery wrote about my work that “at first glance, Jacques Descoteaux’s canvases resemble abstract colour field paintings, but as the viewer focuses on the work, subtle variations in tone and texture emerge, they turn out to be landscapes”.

My paintings are definitely inspired by landscape: the land, the sky and the sea. I try to capture the atmosphere, the essence of place and time. I simplify the landscape – by that I mean that I try to remove much of the controlled details – I let the image create itself on the canvas. I also simplify by using a very limited palette – I will often limit my palette to two or three colours in each painting.

I work in thin layers of paint that allow some of the previous layers to shine through. I probably came to this from my early days of painting in watercolour and pastel.

And finally, I try to leave it up to the viewer to find their meaning in my paintings.