ACCROCHAGES (STIGMATE) (2003) Painting by Claude Bolduc

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

Claude Bolduc was born in Alma, Quebec (Canada) on the 1st of January 1955. On January 4th 1987, birthday of the primitive painter Arthur Villeneuve (Claude Bolduc's first mentor), Claude begins to paint as a self-taught artist. At this time, the painter stages his own memories and political or social topics, in a style that could be described as 'naive'. This can be detected in the dream-like madness of his world where the references, stemming from a personal symbolic system, are plentiful.

Around 1992, Claude Bolduc's art enters a new era. The painter engages himself from beyond the anecdotal and proceeds further into his exploration of the invisible. He draws most of his inspiration from the source of his own impulses, driven by the sublimated vision of his very personal interpretation of his environment. In this way, he attempts to clearly reveal the limits of the parallel universes of consciousness and unconsciousness. To achieve this, he opposes a monochrome nuance, where a multitude of strange beings evolve in a sensual and vivid dreamlike reverie, to a palette of bright and strong colours used in the foreground elements which present a clear statement.

In 1997, Claude Bolduc's move to Geneva (Switzerland) pushes him to a more in depth and uncensored research of his particular symbolic system. In a similar state of mind to that of Jérôme Bosch, his thoughts now reach further towards the greater existential meaning. Through the most ambiguous of contemporary ethical themes, he explores the dark and uncertain avenues opened up by the recent exponential scientific developments and discoveries (pollution, consumption of resources, nuclear threat, mans attempt to control all life, global illnesses…). For Claude Bolduc, the announced reign of the "Man-God", is a frightening concept. This is why his pictures confront Eros and Thanatos without restraint. The painter forces them into a dancing struggle where Judeo-Christian symbolism is revisited through the very singular and exacerbated prism of the artist's vision.

The artist Claude Bolduc is unclassifiable. It is in his opposition to current abstraction that he sets himself up as a caustic witness of his time. He strongly adheres to the pure madness of outsider's art, without denying the academic influences drawn at random from precious finds of which he creates very personal re-interpretations.

Claude Bolduc remains true to the credo of his early works: To paint because it's necessary…

• Nationality: CANADA
• Date of birth : 1955
• Artistic domains:
• Groups: Contemporary Canadian Artists