In July 2023, Julie Ouellet undertook a residency at the Fondation Maeght in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France. There she discovered a lush natural environment and set about transcribing the many different aspects of the landscape she observed through the window of her makeshift studio. As she says, her motif was: “a luminous and bountiful—but also arid—natural setting, amplified by the sound of cicadas that became even louder as I drew. I tried to capture the forms of an umbrella pine, with its intertwined branches pulling the eye towards a central vertex.”

The artist’s residency was marked by a rigorous documentation process involving a number of vestiges in the way of drawings and photographs. Painstakingly recording her subject, Ouellet was relentless in sketching that landscape. By tracing its main lines and exact contours drawn on a transparent film attached to the frame of her window, she has immortalized the panorama. The series of drawings De par la fenêtre, au son des cigales, executed in situ and featured in this exhibition, testifies to that meticulous process.

Time has also shaped Julie Ouellet's works. In this new exhibition, two points of view are intermingled: the time of her residency at the Fondation Maeght and her perception from afar in her studio in East Bolton. The work in charcoal entitled La fenêtre, à distance is the result of that dual temporality.

Created following her return to Québec, Il pleut de l’encre consists of six masterful works, each made up of nine pieces of paper joined together. Ranging from drips to action painting, these monumental works comprise countless droplets of Indian ink, forming compositions that are both dense and powerful.