‍Her stripped-down female forms, in unsettling motion for a time, do not distract us from the essential truth that inhabits them. They are everything but silent… The life patterns in sequences bear the striking imprint of an intimate reality, a state of being, or a collective unconscious that the artist reveals through intuition. A journey of an artist striving toward purity through an interpenetration of body and soul.

‍Trained in printmaking at the Fine Arts School, Claude St-Jacques enjoys scratching and uncovering what lies beneath the layers of her work, revealing the light that comes from within and, in doing so, what still lies behind her present emotion. Her concern for the situation of women in the world and her own lived experience, captured in the moment, are expressed with intensity, as an imperative need to bear witness. Sensitive forms are suggested in order to better grasp a universal essence.

‍In earlier works, her paintings often depicted the female body escaping objective reality through blurred contours, nuances of sensitivity, and elongated proportions. The composition was drawn through diagonals rather than sharp boundaries, giving flexibility to the central subject and a certain balance arising from forms in this space of an emerging union between being—still incomplete, without defined features—and its environment. An identity testimony emerged within the plastic and pictorial dimension, between figuration and abstraction, inscribing the work within an inner vision, a journey into the self, expressed through dark tones and a tactile presence on the surface, like a trace of introspective process.

‍In her recent works, a sign of harmony between self and world, interconnected relationships express inner reconciliation. New living subjects increasingly surround the central form with refinement and fluid variation in colour and rhythm. The desire to capture both within and beyond oneself the flowing of time gives greater freedom to language and gesture. As if the barometer of her vital energy were extending the horizon of her work, the result is more raw, firmer, more open, and less tactile. The mirror has been crossed; another way of being and a new confidence emerge from the composition, even in colours that are at once more vibrant and more serene, welcoming the emergence of light.

‍The intimate process infused into the work brings a vitality that does not break the rhythm of production preceding the emergence from the chrysalis. The composition is rooted in continuity and persistence. This is not a rupture, but an opening. The once solitary silhouette—though the spirit of relationships subtly influenced the whole through contrasts and spatial geometrization—now approaches or is surrounded by clearer forms within an emotive conceptual framework.

‍Between the women who take shape, a fertile language has grown and harmony bathes the atmosphere. The presence of others, the crossed distance, animates the pictorial universe with a regenerating breath that gives expression undeniable strength and power, yet within simplicity, a stripped-down style, respect, and transparency where the energy of the new state, of exchanges and movements, preserves the silhouettes in a poetic dimension—more spiritual and symbolic than physical.

‍This power of reconciliation between past and present, within the inexhaustible register of sensations, impressions, and nuances of sensitivity, energizes the tactile visual field even in chiaroscuro and suggests a continuation along the same path of renewal. The colours of the initial palette—black, gold, sepia, cream, warm and living earth tones—contained the seeds of all movements and continue to follow the artist’s inspiration, now confirmed, while by contrast the light of the backgrounds is intensified. Depth and relief, this impression of engraving in intaglio, testify to a passionate exploration of technique through acrylic, varnish, Indian ink, pastel, pencil—each leaving a light trace, layered applications impressed into transparency, authenticating and illuminating every encounter with the canvas and all relationships.

‍In the presence of St-Jacques’s latest works, the softness of the patina and tonalities leaves an ineffable memory, a feeling of fullness. The gaze passes through interdependencies in fluidity to the heart of the work and penetrates the inner language and life force of the artist. To decipher Claude St-Jacques’s pictorial universe, one must look beyond established forms toward the realization of an intimate journey toward the freedom of being of a spirit always awake, yet one that strong tides have deserted…

‍Continuously represented at L’Harmattan in Baie-Saint-Paul, Estampe Plus in Quebec City, at Michel Bigué in St-Sauveur, at Galerie St-Dizier in Old Montreal, and at the essential Thompson-Landry Gallery in Toronto—a new flagship of Quebec art outside our borders to discover—or at: www.claudestjacques.com. The video art clip “Après les mots” is as eloquent about the artistic and pictorial journey as the astonishing expressions of life in the compositions of the virtual gallery.