JE ME LAISSE GUIDER PAR LA MUSIQUE ET LE HASARD

Caroline Cloutier (CCloutier) is a professional painter. Her practice is guided by music and chance—an intangible, almost mystical duo that inhabits and personifies her creations. She specializes in abstract expressionist works. Her artistic experiments have revealed the expressive power that springs from an intuitive approach. She believes true freedom cannot emerge from art that is planned, calculated, measured, or overly premeditated. She therefore works with techniques and mediums that unleash impulsive expression and allow the magic of chance to assert itself. That magic occurs only in the presence of music, the primary ingredient that binds together every element of her works. Deeply introverted by nature, she views these unplanned abstract—sometimes semi-figurative—universes as reflections of intimate, sensitive, and powerful memories born of atmospheres, sensations, impressions, and mental images. These universes inhabit the artist as much as they inhabit her paintings. The first stage of her creative process is brief yet extremely intense. It unfolds with no preconceived idea or plan, but always to music. With a stick of charcoal or a bottle of ink in hand, she lets music and emotion guide her gestures, allowing a network of lines and shapes to emerge and establish the composition of the work. The second, more considered stage develops the work from this instinctive composition. Colors and textures are selected with an almost meticulous aesthetic care, always seeking a balanced whole. The result is a painting that is at times gentle, at times more agitated—true to the artist’s moods—in which fluid organic forms meet structural lines, and where every line and every patch of color plays a decisive role in the visual whole.