Laurentian Village 1927

Clarence Gagnon painted this Laurentian Village with oil on canvas, and what strikes me is the immediacy of the mark making. It’s all about direct, visible gestures. Check out the way he's rendered the snow and the road. You can almost feel the cold, crisp air. There is a kind of urgency in the paint handling, as if he wanted to capture the fleeting moment before the light changed. The paint isn't overly thick, but you can still see the direction of the brushstrokes, especially in the foreground. It's like the painting is alive, still in the process of becoming. Gagnon’s work reminds me a little of the Fauvist painters like Maurice de Vlaminck, who were also interested in using colour and brushwork to express emotion. But Gagnon brings his own sensibility to it, a kind of quiet, introspective quality. Art is never finished, only abandoned, as they say!