In the studio of… Rosalie Gamache | The worship of painting

She is one of the most prominent Quebec painters today. With a style that is both traditional and contemporary, Rosalie Gamache is passionate about the sensuality of oil painting and creative techniques. We met her in her Montreal studio.

early passion

At the Plural fair last month in Montreal, a couple who had won the $2,000 prize awarded by Loto-Québec went to acquire a work by Rosalie Gamache which appeared in the favorites of Karine Vanasse, spokesperson for the fair. His series of White paints – still lifes, portraits and body studies – sold like hot cakes.

Born in Montreal in 1993, she inherited the genes from her mother, who studied art and became a graphic designer.

During a trip to Paris, at the age of 9, she had the click by seeing paintings by Van Gogh at the Musée d’Orsay. “When I saw the material on the canvas, I had a real crush. When I was 14, I started painting. »

After CEGEP, Rosalie Gamache wanted to improve her fine arts-style figurative technique. She went to Italy to take classes at the Florence Classical Art Academy, a Russian school in line with the prestigious Repin Academy in Saint Petersburg. There she learned to paint from live models and had a revelation for oil painting. “I then understood all the sensuality of this medium, the modeling effects, the transparency. It is incomparable. »

She then went to Quebec City to study visual and media arts at Laval University, while gaining experience by making portraits in Sainte-Anne Street. She also met a mentor, the painter Denis Jacques, who passed on a lot of technical knowledge to her. Returned to Montreal in 2021 to follow the Artch program reserved for emerging artists, she had a residency at the Jano Lapin gallery, before being recruited by the Duran Mashaal gallery in August 2022, which allowed her to exhibit in Toronto. .

An unusual style

It’s not easy to get into classical figuration when you’re a young artist in Quebec. The world of contemporary art is not always kind to this artistic expression! Admirer of John Currin and Glenn Brown, Rosalie Gamache regrets it, but she has always believed in her classic touch with a very contemporary rendering. Creating the illusion of white with small scales of grey, such is the delicacy of his style, with portraits where the skin shines through layers of plaster and still lifes with organic voluptuousness.

She has her models pose naked, covered with her plaster. She then paints from shots taken by her assistant, the filmmaker Martin Laroche, during sessions during which the models improvise poses. She sketches a drawing then uses the half-paste technique favored by French painters of the 19th century.^e Jean-Léon Gérôme and William Bouguereau. Long drying and working in phases that generate these particular effects with a romantic charm.

The workshop

Last December, Rosalie Gamache set up her studio in the apartment she shares with her husband, not far from the Jean-Talon market. With suitable lighting. The space suits his work pace. “I paint for long hours, real painting marathons! Having my paintings close to me allows me to be in the creative process all the time. »

Rosalie Gamache is a technician. She drinks up readings on the creative process. His Bible is The technique of oil painting, written in 1959 by the French painter Xavier de Langlais. She paints on a support that she manufactures: thin cotton pasted on a wooden panel, with an addition of gesso. This technique limits in time the cracks of the paint due in particular to the acidity of the wood.

solo in the fall

Rosalie Gamache will take part in the Symposium international d’art contemporain de Baie-Saint-Paul in August. She is currently painting the paintings which will be exhibited from September 7 to 30 at Duran Mashaal. An opportunity for you to go and contemplate his paintings. As much as they appreciate each other from afar, as they approach little by little, their mystery is clarified, without revealing itself completely. One might think his painting totally classic, but it turns out to be of our time, with its share of conceptual and abstraction.

Realizing the dream she had at 4 years old, Rosalie Gamache considers herself lucky. But she gave herself the means to be the impressive artist she has become. “I always go to the end of the things I undertake,” she says. Painting is visceral for me. When I do a painting marathon the following night, I paint in my head! »

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