Description
Paul Édouard Bourque was born in 1956 in Moncton (New Brunswick) where he lives. He was one of the first graduates in Visual Arts at the Université de Moncton, earning his Bachelor’s degree in 1978. He was project manager at the university’s Musée acadien, and curated two art exhibitions in 1983, the year he also became Executive Director of Galerie Sans Nom, in Moncton. Since 1985, and full-time since 1988, he works as a technician at the Galerie d’art and the Musée acadien of the Université de Moncton.
Bourque has received several grants from public sources: the French government, the government of New Brunswick, the Canada Council for the Arts. He has exhibited solo, chiefly in New Brunswick, on nearly 30 occasions starting in 1978, and has participated in some 30 group exhibitions in the Maritimes and away, since 1980. At one time, Bourque’s work was largely based on the imagination. He currently draws his themes from everyday life and favours a more formal aesthetics. His expression has grown more lyrical since the mid-1980s. Paul Édouard Bourque is a richly intense “image crafter”.
Bourque works in a confined space. He chooses among previously produced images and inserts them in a predetermined time frame, within a precisely numbered series. The act of painting shatters the image’s original structure into multiple variations in an unending process. Casting his object outside painterly borders, and making use of vivid and expressive colours, Bourque transfigures prosaic objects to produce works that are elegant, albeit alarming at times and humorous at others.
Source: https://www8.umoncton.ca
