Untitled_2021

About Untitled_2021

This contemporary abstract painting by Paul Fournier captures the tropical colours of the Caribbean.

For more than six decades, the brilliant, colourful artwork of Paul Fournier has delighted critics and art lovers alike. Fournier is an important Canadian artist.
His signature style of spontaneous brushwork, expressed in a rainbow palette, has always been inspired by the beauty of nature. Fournier doesn’t work from a sketch. His weightless, lyrical form is created by ‘drawing with a paintbrush.’
The dreamlike imagery of this painting in a cascade of pinks, red, green, yellow, purple, orange and white against a deep turquoise blue appears to resemble the colours of tropical waters.

“(As a little boy) I would catch these butterflies, ants…in jars….and watch them build their homes…a wonderful collection of colour…gorgeous.” Paul Fournier

“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. 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.