Low Down Articles
Artist Profiles - Arthur Ladouceur
Article 33 of 73
From the book Artists of the Gatineau Hill by Catherine Joyce. This article first appeared in the "Artist Profiles" column in the March 14, 2007 issue of the The Low Down to Hull and Back News.
Reprinted with permission. Search complete list of Low Down Articles.
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Coming Home to Art
Where does it come from, this hunger to make art? How does one sustain the vision through the obstacle course of life?
From the beginning - what happens to the two-year-old who takes a permanent marker to the inside of the toilet so that he can see the pictures underwater when he pees?
For Chelsea artist, Arthur Ladouceur, the answers have never come easy.
Adopted from an Aylmer orphanage at the age of one, Art grew up a troubled youth in Gatineau. A daydreaming doodler with a passion for hockey, he left school by Grade 6. At 14, when his father died, he ran away from home. For two years he lived in a tent in the Greenbelt; the dead of winter would find him sleeping in unlocked cars. With a couple of stolen hotdogs around a campfire and only his guitar for company, Art taught himself how to play, never dreaming that one day he would be touring with the likes of Colin James, Doug and the Slugs, and 54/40.
But that would be years hence. In the meantime he travelled, living anywhere, searching for the right path. A father at 21, he found himself working at any job - apprentice mechanic, roofer, renovator - but the hunger to express himself never left.
"I never had any training. I never studied music or took any art classes. I wanted it so bad. I'd hear music in my head with the clarity of a painting and I'd just play it. I entered a song-writing contest out west - up against 96 other bands. I won. Suddenly people were calling me up, booking me for the Calgary Stampede.
"I was really shy. Colin James helped me. He said, 'Be whoever you want to be up on stage. But if you don't believe it, they won't either.' I learned to be the man. I wrote the songs, I sang them, I hired the bands. I toured everywhere. Then one day it was time to come home."
In 2000, at the age of 36, Arthur Ladouceur met Robert Hyndman. "I just wanted one of his paintbrushes, you know, the way you'd love a hockey stick from Gordie Howe. And then I met his daughter, Brydie." That was it. Soul mates, they've been together ever since.
Living with Robert in Old Chelsea, Art gradually began to paint. "I knew nothing when I started; Monet, Manet, they could have been players with the NHL for all I knew. But being with Robert, I learned how to see - how to look at a cloud the way a kid does. I paint now with the same passion I feel with music. It's like a parallel universe - the sound and the vision exist complete in my mind. I want it so much, I never give up."
Supported by Carol-Ann Touchette at Galerie du Pare with his first solo show last June, Art's work has taken off. Less than a month ago his paintings were picked up by Koyman Galleries. Four sold on the first day, seven in three weeks. The clarity and precision of his landscapes pulse with a magic realism, with the contained yet vibrating energy of a lifetime of longing. Or is it gratitude for finally coming home to the Art he was meant to be?