By recounting, in chronological order, the stages involved in creating a painting, the video clip-art “TIC TAC TOE” dramatizes the relationship between the artist and her canvas throughout the creative process.

It is the story of this ambiguous relationship that filmmaker Jean-Louis Coté chose to explore. He succeeds in revealing the progression and defining moments in the making of a painting, from the blank canvas to its exhibition in a gallery.

Against the backdrop of an artist’s studio filled with paint jars and all the clutter such a place can contain, one becomes fully aware of the labor behind the finished work. The neat, carefully groomed painter seen at exhibition openings appears here in her natural state, both hands smeared with paint…

This unique, playful, and uninhibited documentary invites us into the intimate reality of an artist’s work. Painting itself becomes an integral part of the piece, almost as a complement to it. The artist, in her own environment, evolves in an authentic relationship with the canvas, within a space opened to the public for the span of a single day.