Welcome to this selection of my charcoal drawings, organizing into thematic categories. The emotional and psychological interconnectedness of thoughts and ideas that preoccupy me as an artist are best presented like this rather than as batches of production along a linear timeline. Each drawing can be likened to a single frame from a film noir that never was, where fatalism is converted into optimism, and from which existential questioning leads towards a hopeful future.

I have been producing charcoal drawings since the early 1980s. I work in charcoal because carbon, its main ingredient, lends itself to a generous range of light and dark effects. My drawings are protected by custom-made angle iron frames that have become an enduring characteristic of my artistic production. I feel that the solidity and weight of those steel frames complements the architectural subject matter of my drawings. The variations in the corner welds and the dark metal surfaces also echo the materiality of charcoal on paper.

This emphasis on surface qualities and interesting materials is rooted in the visual and tactile experience of my early years as a practicing artist. From 1984 to 1995, I lived and worked in old run-down commercial buildings on St. Maurice and Wellington streets, in a neighbourhood known as the “quartier des Récollets,” between Griffintown and Old Montreal. Today, that neighbourhood is completely transformed by urban development, and is known as the Cité du Multimédia. Back then, it was sparsely populated by low-income people who lived affordably next to (and in the case of artists, inside of) dusty warehouses and other aging commercial buildings. These structures spoke of their history through their timeworn appearance and varied construction materials. The unique, beautiful and often ragged people of the neighbourhood made their mark on me. The visual artists, poets and musicians who lived in these relics from the past questioned their destinies, and created their visions for the future. This spirit of questioning in a bleakly beautiful world has permeated my psyche and my imagery. Each new drawing that I create reveals additional facets of a fictitious parallel world, based on history but exploring possible future incarnations.