A 1965 graduate from Montreal’s École des Beaux-Arts, Claude Gauthier is hired in 1966 to work in the graphic arts department of the Société Radio-Canada, where he works as graphic designer, designer and illustrator. Over the course of his thirty-year career with the public broadcaster, Gauthier’s work is rewarded by many prizes; at the same time, he freelances as a designer and illustrator for various magazines, institutions and events… and he finds that painting is confined to too small a portion of his life.
In 1996, Gauthier takes the leap: he chooses to devote all his time to painting. During his first exhibition, he realises that his work, marked by urban subjects, bears the stamp of his past as a graphic designer. Gauthier decides to “liberate” his art, to make it closer to who he really is. Textures and matter take their place, his rural surroundings, where wildlife abounds, take shape and occupy more space.
Gauthier’s paintings are, first and foremost, poetic transpositions of events or moments in the artists’ or his loved ones’ lives…
