Artist of the day: Artist of the day, December 2: Claude Tousignant, a Québec artist (#853)

Claude Tousignant (1932) was born in Montreal, Quebec. Right from his early childhood, he knew he wanted to be an artist. His parents supported him by sending him to the prestigious Montreal museum of fine arts school of art and design, which he attended from 1948-1952. After graduating from the MMFA, he quickly became a member of both the Plasticiens art group, which focused on avant-garde styles of expressionist painting and the Montreal Association of non-figurative artists. He drew inspiration from his Quebec contemporary, Guido Molinari, another highly influential abstract painter of the era; together, they collaborated on many exhibitions and projects. During the creation of his earlier works in the 1950s and early 60's, Tousignant was "concerned with and influenced by the American post-war challenge of creating art through paint alone...He wanted his paintings to be perceived as objects, as autonomous commodities, with no inner meanings or references to anything else"

In his early works, Tousignant was accustomed to painting squares and solid masses of color to form an overall composition; by 1965, he had shifted to circular, pulsating "bullseyes" and other circular color field works. The convergence of his concerns for color and shape led to a significant period (1978) devoted to monochromatic works called "object paintings"

With their vibrating, naturally rhythmic forms and their sharp, clean edges, these paintings challenged the senses and distorted ordinary perceptive patterns. He wanted the viewer to break away from everyday sensory perception, to speak to them optically through his use of color and pattern.

As the colors in his paintings change, the visual perception of the onlooker is affected by the "vibrating" illusion of the artwork, and this optical challenge creates the illusion of movement within the painting. For the amateur and experienced critics alike, these artworks are nothing less than a visual delight.

Tousignant's art cannot be defined or placed in any one specific category; he is at once a minimalist, an expressionist, an op-artist, a color field painter and an abstractionist. His works consist of many different colors and shapes, all of which he arranges in an intricate and delicate sequence to form an overall effect of "pure color experience".

To those skeptics who view Tousignant's works as mere simplistic shapes or child-like designs, there is a very important component of his art that these amateurs should be made aware that Tousignant mixes and creates all his own pigments.

His works have two distinct characteristics; their large size and unpredictable, vibrant colors. His works are nearly always large scale, with either a combination of squares and other tetrahedral shapes as their main focus or large "bullseye" like circular paintings; both always vary in color.

When painting these large colorful works, Tousignant takes great care not to show any evidence of brushstrokes, variations in texture, or any other form of surface disturbance to his seamless works. His attention to detail is highly evident in the sharp-edged, flawless look of his work.

Claude Tousignant is still alive and painting today. He is a greatly talented and influential artist, not only for the Canadian artist of the new era, but for many people, artists, and aspiring artists around the globe. His work is exciting, unique, and defies the laws of typical sensory perception. As long as color and optics are an integral part of everyday life, Tousignant's work will remain a landmark for color field painters and op-artists everywhere.

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