Etienne Garceau — Paintings

I paint because it gives me a space where I don’t really have to think about anything else. I like working with my hands, figuring things out physically, and having something in front of me that is completely mine to decide. There is no client and no one telling me what the final result needs to be.

A lot of what I think about outside the studio has to do with being human. Why we behave the way we do, why we are so easily influenced by our experiences, why we have such a hard time being satisfied, and what actually makes a life feel worthwhile. I have spent a lot of my adult life thinking about happiness, partly because I have never felt like a naturally very happy person. As I get older, I am less convinced that happiness is even the right goal. Meaning, contentment, connection and the way we experience other people seem increasingly important to me.

I am also interested in attraction and appearance, probably because they have had more influence over my own life than I would like to admit. I still want a painting to attract me, but I am more interested when beauty starts to become slightly uncomfortable. I like the point where something can be ugly, unsettling, bodily or even repulsive and still somehow remain inviting.

The human figure gives me a way into those questions. It gives the viewer something recognizable to hold onto, but I don’t want the figure to explain the painting. I like when it appears, disappears, becomes paint, or becomes something else entirely.

Material is a big part of that. I work with thick paint, scraping, dragging, transparent layers, charcoal and different surfaces because I want the painting to reward being seen in person. We spend so much time looking at flat images on screens that I want the physical object to offer something different, sometimes almost becoming sculptural.

I don’t need people to understand what I was thinking when I made a painting. I would rather they feel something. Curiosity is important to me, but that feeling can change from one work to another. Sometimes it might be vulnerability, discomfort, attraction or repulsion. I like the idea of someone feeling slightly unsettled, but still wanting to stay with the painting long enough to look again.

Over time, I hope the work becomes a record of the internal conversations I have had with myself at different points in my life. The questions may change, and the paintings should change with them.