Low Down Articles
Artist Profiles - Nathalie Coutou
Article 8 of 73
From the book Artists of the Gatineau Hill by Catherine Joyce. This article first appeared in the "Artist Profiles" column in the September 5, 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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Sowing the Seed of Creativity
Nathalie Coutou speaks of the first gathering after the sowing of the seed - "the harvest celebration from the abundance of good gatherings." As the owner of Khewa Gallery in Wakefield, which has just won the 2007 Grand Prix de Tourisme for the Outaouais, Nathalie honours the fruits of the artistic efforts of aboriginal peoples. As an inspired painter and story-teller, she helps others to understand the connection between the earth and the creative spirit.
"The name Khewa means 'the North Wind that brings you home'. I want all the people around the world to reconnect with their own stories, with family and community. We have to value the stories dear to us and to honour who we are."
Born near Joliette in 1972, Nathalie grew up on a large farm where they raised Malamute huskies. Her father had come to Canada from France at the age of 18. Twenty-two years later he married an aboriginal woman.
"My father was so respectful of my mother's First Nation heritage and he had such a deep connection to the land - this was his food that he passed on to us. I still rock in the chair where my father told us stories."
An artist himself, Nathalie's father allowed her to paint beside him as long as she was quiet. "He called my paintbrush my talking stick - let it talk to you', he said. He made it precious and he taught me that it is okay to be where you are at. To be young and free and not knowing the full picture - but always to seize the moment."
With a degree in Graphic Arts from Montreal, Nathalie has followed her talking stick throughout her life, sometimes losing touch with it under the pressure of creating the vision of her gallery and of supporting other artists. Invited on a Canadian delegation to Taiwan two years ago, she saw artists in the mountains who made everything yet they had nothing. "Sometimes you have to journey away from home to understand. In Taiwan I became a satellite eye on Canada. We have everything here but we must nurture our own creativity if we are to find a living balance."
Returning home, Nathalie began to paint again, to journey into her own emotions. Her style changed. Where her work had been very small, now she chose a large canvas to paint a woman honouring her own medicine. "She is Mother Earth. Her body is wrapped in a blanket that becomes the earth and she is holding an eagle feather like the extension of a wing. Beneath the full moon she is softly giving back her spirit, flowing everywhere."
Fog swirls in Nathalie's paintings, emblematic. "This is where we meet as individuals, in the mists of contact where cold meets warm, where nourishment mayor may not create relationship. The fog is that first contact - like the wind of no time that travels through our lives. We breathe it in and it gives us life."
Nathalie's vision has shaped her art and her gallery, rising from the seed of her father's teachings and her own deep commitment to her heritage. Her paintings are testament to her reverence for the fragile earth and for the good gatherings that the creative spirit brings to those who devote themselves to her care.