Christian Michaud | In balance between two arts

(Saint-Jean-Port-Joli) It was during a stay in the Yukon that the actor had his revelation. Since then, Christian Michaud has sculpted, engraved, drawn with charcoal and thus found his balance between the stage and his art studio. Portrait of a plural artist.

From the village of Saint-Jean-Port-Joli, take the road that winds through miles of farmland, then turn right at the first intersection. “You have reached your destination,” your geolocator indicates. Really? Don’t doubt it: it knows better than you.

A house can be seen behind a row of trees. Next to it, a miniature replica. Without further warning, you have arrived at your destination: the studio of sculptor and actor Christian Michaud.

Inside, a dozen paintings lie on the floor near a wood stove. A scent of scorched wood and maple sawdust floats. It is in this creative den that the artist spends hours grinding the wood that he burns, chisels, cuts and shapes. The medium will take years to reveal its secrets. Never mind, the man is patient.

From one board to another

Trained at the Conservatoire d’art dramatique de Québec, it was on stage that the actor made his name. He was seen playing the lead role in classic productions such as Macbeth (Nicky-Roy Prize), Caligula And The Odyssey (2012 Trident Subscribers’ Award). On the small screen, he was part of the cast of Barracks 99, The Blue Hour And Elsewhereand appears In Witches (TVA), whose second season was filmed this summer.

However, it is other boards that we are currently interested in: those that he has been working on tirelessly for more than 10 years and which have become his raw material.

“I did a lot of theatre, and then at some point it became too much,” he says. “Before I got sick of doing it, I took a year off and went to live in the Yukon. That’s when things changed. I realized that theatre wasn’t the end of the world and that I also wanted to do something else.”

A regular pendulum

For a solitary nature who does not fit the typical profile of those who run the red carpets, working with wood was a fabulous discovery. Upon his return from the Yukon, after a year and a half on the run, he returned to Quebec, then left the city for the countryside, an hour from the Grand Théâtre.

On his land, a collapsing shed was renovated to house what started as a hobby. Things took off, giving him validation that he belonged.

At 50, without excluding his original loves, the artist has found the formula that allows him to work at his own hours and pace, while being available for his 9-year-old daughter. Now, his heart swings between sculpture and theater. “More and more, I integrate woodworking into my schedule while continuing to do theater. I am establishing a ratio that I like: 70% sculptor and 30% actor.”

Sculpting the infinitely large

“I am not capable of drawing a stick figure, and that is a bit why I am in abstraction. But at the same time, I have things to say!” And it is through woodworking that he does it.

Upon returning from the Yukon in 2012, the artist took a woodworking course and began by making kitchen accessories, before realizing that there was redundancy.

What he likes above all is to play with textures, reliefs, shapes. Creation inhabits him, lights him up and imposes itself.

In addition to sculpture, engraving was added, then charcoal. Everything gradually migrated to wall sculpture, practiced on wooden panels that Christian Michaud uses as a canvas. The common thread, however, remains the material, rendered in a refined and sensitive aesthetic, and a spruce silhouette that he integrates into most of his works and which has become his signature: so many whiffs of a Yukon that accompanies him daily like ambient music that we can’t get enough of.

“The Yukon is nature, wide open spaces. There’s this feeling of being tiny in an immensity,” he describes. “What is our place in all this? I wonder. It’s sometimes dizzying, sometimes frightening, but it’s also revealing. Unconsciously, I think I’m trying to reproduce these sensations that I felt and that didn’t come out in words.”

Christian Michaud has been silencing his imposter syndrome and daring to display his art for five years. As an embarrassed guy who finds on stage the confidence he sometimes lacks in life, he is slowly finding his “way of going” with sculpture.

“I am self-taught and I have evolved through trial and error. Visual arts purists might say that it goes in all directions, but that doesn’t matter to me. I question myself less and less about what people think of my creations. I don’t do it to be liked, but because I need it, because it’s what comes out and it makes me feel good. And it’s without needing approval that I propose it.”

Christian Michaud will present his works from October 24 to November 3 at the Berthelet Art Gallery in Trois-Rivières.

Visit the exhibition page

Visit Christian Michaud’s website