Selected Works 2003-2024

All are oil on canvas, signed © Judy Gouin and dated on the bottom edge. All copyrights and related rights belong to Judy Gouin. Where prices are indicated, the work is available for sale.

Fans 2016

These works are my response to Edgar Degas’ fans, which he made at various times between 1868 and ‘85. Degas, like Monet, Van Gogh, and other European contemporaries, was fascinated by Japanese wood-block prints. At the time, commercial and political relationships between “The West” and “The Far East” were expanding, and cultural influences were being felt on both sides. Degas used his fans (as he did many of his drawings and paintings) to explore the Japanese attitude to materials and space, an attitude that allowed large open areas to function as positive elements in an image. He used coloured and metallic inks and watercolour on silk. His imagery, as in many of his other works, was of the theatre, the ballet and the café concert. I wondered what a 21st-century, northeastern Ontario version would look like, and these fans are one conclusion. They are the same scale as Degas’ fans, but the material is Japanese paper. The theatre stage is the space behind my house in Temagami.

All these works are framed with acid-free mats and Tru Vue colour-neutral, low-reflection glass.

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Usually, a wild animal has disappeared before one even notices it. A siting may be only a glimpse out of the corner of one’s eye. Or just a movement in the bush, a momentary recognition of a shape that just as quickly dissolves. This sensation, of almost not seeing something, is what I tried to convey in “Fan: Lynx”.

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A snowshoe hare is almost invisible in winter. All that one sees are its eyes, nose and the inside and tips of its ears. Even then, it may only reveal itself if it moves. “Fan: Marten and snowshoe hare” describes an event I witnessed a couple of winters ago. I was surprised to see tiny black shapes moving up and down in clouds of snow. It took a couple of seconds to realize that it was a hare, bounding out of the bush into the open, signalling that someone else was in hot pursuit. Even with its big, furry feet it was having a hard time in the deep snow. The hare was actually breaking trail for its pursuer: A marten emerged not far behind, leaping, its warm brown colour appearing red in the flat light and monochrome landscape. They crossed the clearing and disappeared.

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“Fan: Crow” is simply an observation that depictions of birds in pine branches, especially in Japanese and Chinese art, tend to be romantic and sweet, while our northern reality is usually neither.

Judy Gouin, 2016