‍Lucie Dufour, Guide Mont-Royal, May 4, 1993

‍It is often through speaking with artists about their creative process, or through the privilege of witnessing the act of creation itself, that people gradually become moved by works of art. In addition to exhibiting Claude St-Jacques’s recent paintings, Galerie Simon Blais is presenting the art-clip Tic Tac Toe, in which the artist can be seen fully immersed in her work. The video, highly successful, has the great merit of demystifying the artist’s gesture.

‍Even without having seen the clip, one is struck by the large canvases where dark and radiant colors intermingle, by the tiny touches of red that draw the eye, and by the warm golds whose tones may recall the colors of ancient Greek vases.

‍Inscriptions that cannot quite be deciphered, along with the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, are scattered across the canvases; they are the result of scratching into the painted surface. “It’s as if I were signing everywhere,” she says. These markings resemble a kind of modern cave painting. The artist wishes to create an impression of antiquity without seeming old-fashioned; she values these references to the beginnings of time, as she explained in an interview. Likewise, the scratched numbers are equally important to her: “They represent years that marked my life; they are a bit like a signature.”

‍After seeing Penelope, the Indochina series, the Hieroglyphs series, as well as Coral and the others, the clip-art awaits us. We see the artist locked in a physical struggle with the canvas, her hands covered in paint, then scraping the surface. The gestures are energetic, and one senses how exhausting they must be. Filmmaker Jean-Louis Coté has created a true video clip: the camera moves rapidly, beginning with a detail before pulling back to reveal the whole. The music by Richard Lord and Jean-Claude Marsan follows the rhythm of the artist’s movements.

‍Originally, Ms. St-Jacques wanted to combine live painting with the opening reception of her exhibition. “Painting with one’s hands, getting dirty, is incompatible with the neat and elegant woman people see on opening nights.” From this idea came the concept of the clip. “I think there is something to gain by bringing artistic activity out of the studio, even though by definition it is a solitary act… And for the public, it can be immensely enjoyable to discover, or better understand, the artist behind the canvas.”

‍Creating in front of a camera was a very different experience for an artist accustomed to painting alone, yet one she chose to share with us — and fortunately so.