Detail from one of two 23-foot freizes by Louis-Pierre Bougie, A Primordial Forest to Get Lost In. It extends almost the length of the gallery, and its green, grey and white foliage, incorporates a plethora of lifeforms – birds, reptiles, humans and hybrid beasts.

They are a study in contrasts, the two exhibits currently at the Cookshire-Eaton Art Gallery.
In the downstairs gallery, the work of youthful Amélie Lemay-Choquette carries the banner of light, and her paint converses with dance. Upstairs, the work of seasoned Louis-Pierre Bougie probes the dark, and his art dialogues with poetry.
Lemay-Choquette’s paintings, first. In her studies at Concordia University a decade ago, she specialized both in contemporary dance and painting. Spontaneity and evanescence imbue her art. I imagine her hand dancing in front of the glass, repeating a movement, and then applying the paint at the zenith of the gesture, embodying it.
So each painting captures “the decisive moment” of the action that the renowned French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson said he aimed to seize.
The title of Lemay-Choquette’s exhibit is Interstice, which works both in French and English to describe a space or gap between two objects or spaces. “Between light and shadow,” she said. “Between bodies, during the pandemic. Between the piece and its projection on the wall. And working through emotions, to come to a release.”
“I went through this experience with my body, through movement,” she commented. “In my new work, I discovered the material differently. I used transparent paint. In the light, it becomes light. Like the reflection of water.”
Indeed, her work dances between transparency and colour. It’s intriguing and brilliant, in all senses of the word.
Upstairs, it’s a whole different universe. Louis-Pierre Bougie, who died in January 2021 at the age of 74, was a printmaker and painter, and most would agree, the foremost engraver of his generation in Quebec.
Engraving is a demanding discipline, and he studied it 15 years in Paris, and also worked and exhibited across Europe and in New York. His influence has fostered the visibility of Quebec printmaking, and he has left his mark in books, in a myriad exhibits, and in working with other artists, most notably in the Atelier Circulaire in Montreal.
The contrast between the two artists exhibiting in Cookshire is not only of age, but in form, space, colour, and engagement with the surface. It’s hard to imagine a more energetic yet premeditated approach than engraving, where one literally incises lines into the surface. Bougie’s oeuvre builds on the work of three fascinating 19th century master printmakers with uncommon imaginations: Félicien Rops, Goya, and William Blake.
Many of Bougie’s works selected for this exhibit, created between 2008 and 2018, are in fact painted in acrylics on canvas, and others are freestanding totem-like four-legged metal sculptures. Yet the sturdy lines and forms of both sculptures and paintings integrate lush vegetation, animal, and imaginary beings in dark intrigue. Bougie’s own imagination is indeed uncommon.
Bougie’s exhibit, Vert-de-gris (Green-grey), closes with three pencil sketches that dialogue with short poems by Martine Audet. He created them during his hospital stay, and photolithographs were posthumously made of them.
The exhibits of Louis-Pierre Bougie and Amélie Lemay-Choquette continue at the Cookshire-Eaton Art Gallery until October 9.