Artist:
Mark Thibeault
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Canadian painter Mark Thibeault lives in Telkwa, British Columbia. His practice extends across painting, music and lutherie.
Thibeault's abstract works are an exploration of landscape, especially in regards to his immediate surroundings in British Columbia. This is combined with interests in the painted gesture, allegories within the history of painting and romantic notions of home and belonging.
As a musician and guitar builder as well as a visual artist, Thibeault’s approach to abstraction is also informed by the role of chance in musical improvisation. Likewise, his paintings–bricolages of seemingly unrelated visual information transcribed from multiple viewpoints of a landscape–bring together line, form, colour and texture to create new and unexpected meanings. Thibeault relates this to the way stories are pieced together, or the familiarity of distant melodies and visions. His process becomes a gathering of experiences finding their way to be witnessed as a mark; an intuitive unveiling or revealing of what he describes as the inherent linear compositions woven through our perception of the world and our interactions within it.
He studied for a B.F.A. majoring in visual arts, primarily painting and drawing, at the University of Windsor, BC (1992). He has designed and crafted over 400 world-class musical instruments, examples of which are reproduced in major publications celebrating the art of lutherie, including, Terry Burrows '1001 Guitars To Dream of Playing Before You Die'.
Mark Thibeault has a three month solo exhibition at the Museum of Northern British Columbia, titled, Postcards from the Pacific, April to June 2024. He was the inaugural Cassiar Cannery, Artist in Residence, British Columbia (2019), and his work has been presented in numerous group and solo exhibitions throughout Canada and in London including; Archetypes and Allegories Solo Exhibition, NoonPowell Fine Art, London (2022), Populated, Smithers Art Gallery, Terrace, BC (2022) Affordable Art Fair, Battersea Spring, London (2022-2024); Experience of Wonder: Wonderment, NoonPowell Gallery, London (2021); Affordable Art Fair, Battersea, London (2021); Populated, Smithers Gallery, Terrace, BC (2021); Coastal Influence, Terrace, BC (2021); Visual Variations: Figurative to Abstract, NoonPowell Gallery, London (2020); Christmas Exhibition, NoonPowell Gallery, London (2020); The Museum of Northern British Columbia - Cycles (2020); Smithers Art Gallery - A Line Collected, British Columbia (2019); Smithers Art Gallery - Home, British Columbia.