Suzanne Cloutier : Figural Space
Two elements figure consecutively in Suzanne Cloutier`s large scale acrylic paintings - the figure and the landscape or environs… The environs are constructed and build a flat spatial background. Upon this background we find figures, either contemplative or in action. The overall atmosphere is one that encourages a sense of placement…. Collaged onto these paintings, often disguised by paint, are torn layerings of found materials or recycled paper. The multi-layering or integration of thefragment into these otherwise painterly compositions began with works on paper but now can be found in Cloutier`s paintings as well. Human figures seem elongated, and spread out onto the space of the canvas. The gesture of painting becomes an action that reaffirms the physical bodily nature of each composition. Sometimes they feel to be stopped in action…and have been set off into these actions by the shaping of their placement in the two-dimensional surface of each painting.
Form – the bodily form – becomes the allegorical subject, but these are real allegories that merge into and with life. Once initiated the figures are drawn into and serve to define the space of the composition. Bodily form and environment become inseparable, are fused and choreographed into the composition. The figure builds a stop action narrative tension… or alternatively gives way to become contemplative, build a presence or atmosphere … A musical atmosphere permeates these works. The sound could be silence, in a mountainous landscape, or by the sea or a lake, or it could be co-ordinated, a collaboration between two figures in an indeterminate space, as with two dancers from Jean-Pierre Perrault`s dance company. The emphatic, the gestural is coloured and textured by Cloutier in a theatrical way…
It is no surprise to realize that Suzanne Cloutier has developed backdrops and sets for a variety of notable film, television and theatrical productions… We sense some of this playful spatial ambiguity and tension in Cloutier`s artform…Spatial location engenders a strange dislocation of the personages, even as they seem to be integral to the composition. The layering of found torn fragments of paper and material further this sense of what appears to be stable, actually being unstable, potentially dislocated. This is only apparent from close-up, while from afar these paintings look serene.
The figures in Cloutier`s paintings represent change, the potential to transform, and the spatial that which we exist within – the place as some undefined perpetuity. The spatial is where we exist within time. There is this feeling of these paintings describing an ongoing progression... It is as if these paintings were part of a procession where the human figures served to define the space. The colourful backdrops, whether in nature, or in an indeterminate non-space, establish a dimensionality within this parade, and the figures are seemingly integrated as actors into a composition. And so these paintings reflect the ever fluctuating states of being we all face in life. They encapsulate and capture it all evocatively. As potential, tentative representations, they reflect on an interiority of the spirit, a sense of place within. The template they work with is time.
John K. Grande
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