LILLY IN THE NIGHT
each piece is seemingly endless in its depth of colour and detail, and a lifetime spent staring into one of his works could perhaps not uncover all of its hidden surprises and touches. Marcel says many of his paintings home in on the remarkable elements of nature often overlooked or ignored. “I think the path I took with my painting was more an aesthetic path, not so much of an intellectual path,” he says. “It’s always natural environment, but I twist it a lot. I put elements together that you may not necessarily find in nature together. In a way it’s light surrealism because of the combination. Everything is based around the shape, the lights and the colours. “It’s my way of participating socially in bringing a little bit of positivity and some respect for nature. When people look at my paintings they rediscover something, like a painting of flowers with a close up. I show the intimate part of the flower people normally don’t see.” Marcel’s approach to creation was shaped through curiosity. Raised in Quebec, Canada, he spent the first 10 years of his career in his home country before love brought him to Australia 26 years ago. As a young man, on one of his many trips to visit exhibitions in Quebec, a particularly fascinating show and a fistful of courage would spark his creative fire. “There was a major exhibition and I was so impressed that I made the decision I was going to go down that path,” he says. “It was a group of young artists in their late 20s who were using Renaissance-period technique with a modern twist – it was a little bit surreal. It was really well done, really well executed. “Following the exhibition, I knocked at the door of the artists I’d seen in the gallery. They were about 10 years older than me, but they were very welcoming to me. They welcomed me into the group and shared their philosophy and technique. “That way of working was very involved technically. You needed knowledge and it wasn’t knowledge you could find in an art school. It’s something you need to experiment with to discover how it works.” Marcel tackles each of his works in layers. Large pieces can take around 50 hours at the easel and each coat takes around two weeks >
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