Richard Chenier
Chard Chénier
Since 1971 Chard paints acrylic cosmological paintings available as prints on both paper and canvas. He also creates paper works using inks and coloured pencil.
I was born in 1947 in a French-Canadian community in St-Boniface, Manitoba, a prairie town beside the Red River. There I learned honesty, sincerity and a good sense of humour. My parents had survived the depression. They both came from large poor French Canadian families. Their background, unfortunately, did not prepare them for a son with artistic tendencies.
They sent me to a school run by Marianists, a male religious order devoted to the Virgin Mary and education. They wore black suits with white shirts and black ties. I sketched constellations on my scribblers and the Brothers often complained my head was in the stars (dans les étoiles). Forty years later, I paint the evolution of these designs on canvas.
The prairie sky's star-studded vastness and astounding sunsets are my major influence in my work-as well as the richly colored rituals of the Roman Catholic masses. Eskimo and Indian art, also, influenced, not only my line, but the way I express our interconnectedness with the cosmos.
When I was 15, a professor visiting from Chicago noticed one of my paintings hanging in the principal's office. He told the principal, Brother Albert Laurin (my uncle), that this student should be removed from school and brought immediately to an art school; however, this idea being unheard of in St-Boniface, the suggestion was ignored. After graduating I was told of this. To this day, I still feel frustration that my pleas to go to art school were ignored. With a desire to accomplish more with my life, I found work in Canada's capital, Ottawa.
I dropped out of my civil service job in Ottawa to become an artist/musician in Montreal. My parents were disappointed but eventually accepted my decision. My mother had always encouraged me to believe in personal happiness and this psychological endorsement gave me the confidence to trust my instincts.
By the mid-70's I was creating cosmological abstracts. Simultaneously, my interests rebounded back to earth towards psychology and spirituality, ecology and politics. Underlying all this growth was a belief that it is more important to be a good human being-that the true art emerges through who one is rather than vice versa. Yes, at certain periods art alters the artist but this is a state of grace. The cosmos bestows only when egocentricity is surrendered.
For most of my life my health was frail. By my early 40's when I thought I was dying a genetic disorder was diagnosed and a treatment was prescribed. Then I experienced, for the first time since childhood, what it felt to be healthy and have energy to spare. It is during this period that I painted the Leap of Faith. It depicts my return to life:
My heart leapt back into the heart of the universe. I was in love, marrying a wonderful woman and destined to know the joy of being a father... I consider myself fortunate to have been granted a second chance at life.
Over the years I evolved professionally and now exhibit internationally. In the early 90's I juxtaposed figures with abstractions to emphasize human values. The late 90's have seen the creation of mandala abstractions to reflect my spiritual and ecological concerns. A whole new vision is emerging. The 21st new century inspires me to explore new aesthetics. I hope my paintings point humanity towards creating a moral universe--what Albert Einstein believed to be humanity's greatest challenge.
My art is often described as "cosmological". The stars wink back back knowing that all I do is paint the human heart as best I can. Thanks to the Hubble Telescope I see stars being born and galaxies never seen before.
