Pete Bouchard is a Montréal-based visual artist whose practice crisscrosses the boundaries of printmaking, painting and fibre arts. Touching on themes of environmental degradation, habitat fragmentation and the sublime, his sustainably driven artwork seeks to unearth a deeper understanding of place, time and material.

In 2017, Bouchard graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a Master of Fine Arts in studio art, with a focus on print media. He also holds a BFA in studio arts from Concordia University and has previously worked on Cirque du Soleil touring shows as head of wardrobe and costume technician. Pete is a member of the Vox Populi Print Collective.

Pete Bouchard is a Montréal-based visual artist whose practice crisscrosses the boundaries of printmaking, painting and fibre arts. Touching on themes of environmental degradation, habitat fragmentation and the sublime, his sustainably driven artwork seeks to unearth a deeper understanding of place, time and material.

In 2017, Bouchard graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a Master of Fine Arts in studio art, with a focus on print media. He also holds a BFA in studio arts from Concordia University and has previously worked on Cirque du Soleil touring shows as head of wardrobe and costume technician. Pete is a member of the Vox Populi Print Collective.

Mountain peaks, forests, glaciers and secluded lakes - the feelings evoked by these landscapes are placid and mysterious. Their magnitude and strange ecological communities exude a sense of otherness that plays on our dreams and stokes our fears. Growing up in the Great White North, the vast and remote wilderness caught my imagination. At first, through the lenses of manicured cultural symbols, where nature was an idealized, separate and external entity. Now, working directly from the backcountry, I’m trying to reconcile my place, impact and purpose in the natural world; this immense, intertwined web of beings.

Of particular interest to me are sites oozing doom and ecstasy. I purposely mine the tension found in magnificent environment threatened by the usual layers of human blunders: unfettered energy extraction, introduced species, habitat fragmentation, etc. Since capturing the essence of the sublime is an ideal which artists have long pursued, and often failed to effectively translate into visual terms - how do you present the unpresentable? I now utilize the sites’ molecules as material of expression. Native fibres, pigments and dyes are harvested on location and placed in relation with invasive species or man-made objects. The energy of sites is then transformed into material vitality that lives on in the artwork as marks, colour and paper.

With the use of textures and shapes evoking contemporary experience with the outdoors, the work strives to apprehend the landscape rather than merely infer the sensible. By reconstructing the primacy of tangible locations, steeped with sublime qualities, the images and installations incite a closer look at the organic matter that surrounds us, its possibilities and a questioning of our attitude towards the complex system that sustains life.

Mountain peaks, forests, glaciers and secluded lakes - the feelings evoked by these landscapes are placid and mysterious. Their magnitude and strange ecological communities exude a sense of otherness that plays on our dreams and stokes our fears. Growing up in the Great White North, the vast and remote wilderness caught my imagination. At first, through the lenses of manicured cultural symbols, where nature was an idealized, separate and external entity. Now, working directly from the backcountry, I’m trying to reconcile my place, impact and purpose in the natural world; this immense, intertwined web of beings.

Of particular interest to me are sites oozing doom and ecstasy. I purposely mine the tension found in magnificent environment threatened by the usual layers of human blunders: unfettered energy extraction, introduced species, habitat fragmentation, etc. Since capturing the essence of the sublime is an ideal which artists have long pursued, and often failed to effectively translate into visual terms - how do you present the unpresentable? I now utilize the sites’ molecules as material of expression. Native fibres, pigments and dyes are harvested on location and placed in relation with invasive species or man-made objects. The energy of sites is then transformed into material vitality that lives on in the artwork as marks, colour and paper.

With the use of textures and shapes evoking contemporary experience with the outdoors, the work strives to apprehend the landscape rather than merely infer the sensible. By reconstructing the primacy of tangible locations, steeped with sublime qualities, the images and installations incite a closer look at the organic matter that surrounds us, its possibilities and a questioning of our attitude towards the complex system that sustains life.