By Scott Lemoine
For Sylvie Grenier, longtime Lowertown resident and artist, painting is a therapeutic practice, a way of navigating emotion and making sense of the world. Her work is bold, textured, and multi-layered and this spring, Grenier shares her unique way of seeing in a new solo exhibition at Ben Franklin Place.
Entitled Ephemera, the show features 15 large paintings, part of a series that Grenier has been working on over the last four years. The passing of her mother followed closely by the pandemic brought Grenier to an extended meditation on the passage of time and the transience that inevitably marks and transforms everything.
Grenier distills feeling through an artistic practice akin to archaeology. Working primarily in oil paint and cold wax, a paste-like substance made of beeswax and mineral spirits, Grenier’s work features complex surfaces that she builds up by adding layer upon layer, before selectively scraping and dissolving the surface to expose what’s underneath.
The result is a kind of record in the work itself of its history and making. It invites the viewer to consider what has been exposed and what remains concealed, how the work came to be through a series of accumulations and experiences that are interrupted by gaps, revelations, wounds, and remembrances.
Grenier compares her work and practice to poetry: a search for the essential in an observation or idea. She doesn’t insist on a specific interpretation of her work. While its creation is intensely personal – a series of decisions made over the course of weeks or months as a painting takes shape – Grenier acknowledges that her work will mean something different to each viewer.
She cites Mark Rothko and Helen Frankenthaler as some of her favourites, artists who knew how to combine colours in a way that compelled the viewer to stop and consider the meaning of the work.
Grenier’s work aims to inspire the same act of seeing. She hopes that the viewer will, by taking time to really look carefully at it, be spurred on to reflect about becoming and the passage of time.
As an abstract painter, Grenier is inspired by angles, textures, colours, and shadows. It’s an unusual way of seeing the world, focused on what’s beautiful and arresting in the attributes and confluence of its parts rather than on the scene or object to be represented.
When she starts a new work, Grenier has an idea or theme in mind and specific shapes and textures that she wants to explore. But as soon as these find their way on to the surface of the piece, the next mark and the next gesture after that is always unpredicted, always unanticipated. In responding to what came before, Grenier builds up the painting.
Her practice of looking attentively at the world gives her work immediacy. On an artists’ residency in Spain, Grenier found herself inspired to mix red dirt into the cold wax, literally incorporating her location into her work. She hopes to embark on another residency soon, to be challenged and stimulated by new sights and experiences.
Ephemera runs April 4 to June 10 at the Atrium Art Gallery at Ben Franklin Place (101 Centrepointe Drive). Monday to Friday, 8:30 am to 8:00 pm. Saturday and Sunday, 10 am to 5:00 pm.