Fire Bird Blue #2

About Fire Bird Blue #2

This colourful expressionist acrylic painting by Paul Fournier has a bird theme.

He is known as the ‘exotic modernist’—Canada’s Paul Fournier has always loved the world of colour and how nature’s palette rendered in expressive form could evoke emotion. The brushwork here is spontaneous, and the dynamic imagery is reminiscent of a bird in flight. Paint drips and curated markings add to the energy of this painting. Inspired by the brilliant colours he once experienced in the Caribbean, Fournier’s paintings are often a wild melange of colours—reds, blues, purple, yellow, turquoise, and white. This joyful piece is named after the ‘Fire Bird,’ the ancient mythological creature also known as the phoenix.

“I went down to the coral reefs in the Bahamas…in the sixties…ten days on a schooner…I snorkelled…and looked down…there’s no horizon line down there…When I saw the reefs just alive with colour…a wonderland…I just wanted to paint pictures that didn’t mimic the coral reef but were teaming with interest and life….” Paul Fournier

“Fournier’s passionate dialogue with both nature and the stuff of painting links even his most diverse works. No matter how potent the allusion, Fournier, as a highly intuitive artist with a profound belief in the expressive power of his materials, always makes us aware of the sensuality of paint, the excitement of the act of painting.” Karen Wilkin, Art critic

Paul Fournier was born during the Great Depression in Simcoe, Ontario. He first studied at the Ontario College of Art and Design in 1959 and went on to study printmaking at McMaster University in Hamilton in 1967. Fournier also received an Honorary Doctor of Laws from Sir Wilfrid Laurier University in 1996, where he’d also been the artist in residence. Inspired by the Fauvist colours of Matisse, Fournier became a member of a group of artists in Toronto who were mentored by Jack Bush and together explored modernist expressionism. During a career that spans six decades, Fournier has had solo exhibitions in several Canadian cities and in the U.S. His work is held in private collections in North and South America and Europe. Public collections include the Art Gallery of Ontario, the National Gallery of Canada and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington.