Unlike some, who take years to decide what they want to do in life, Gilles Labranche always knew he wanted to paint. He doesn't remember when he first started painting, but he thinks he must have been around five years old. He used to draw and paint on anything he could find, even once cutting up some curtain material to use as canvasses, much to the dismay of his grandmother, in whose house he was living at the time.
At the age of ten, he walked into an art store and asked the sale clerk, "I want to paint. What do I need?" He came out, arms loaded with brushes and canvasses. Gilles Labranche has been painting ever since, except for a brief period in his early twenties when he had to resort to working for a living.
Gilles Labranche paints for himself first and foremost. "I don't give workshops. I paint for myself. When I sold my first painting, I had already been painting for some twenty years. For me, painting is primarily a means of exploration and self-discovery."
Gilles Labranche is driven by impulse. Like a miner excavating a new shaft, he explores a particular style or approach until he has exhausted all its creative and expressive possibilities. At that point, he moves to something else. He started by painting his own neighbourhood of Saint-Henri, then other areas of Montreal, before expanding his horizons to include other regions and towns in Quebec. He paints in an abstract as well as a naive style. "I don't want to get suck in a rut. I don't want to be known as an artist who spent his whole life painting the same style. I like to explore new sensations. I don't want to limit myself."
Gilles Labranche has long been recognized as a winter painter. He used to paint snowstorms, with their mixture of violence and peacefulness - the howling wind, the falling snow, the pedestrians battling the elements as they struggle to reach their destination. "People loved my scenes and kept asking for more. There was enormous power in those snowstorms I painted, but also a certain amount of peace. People saw themselves in my paintings. That's why they bought them. They recognized themselves in my canvasses."
He no longer paints winter scenes. Now he paints exteriors and facades - houses, stores, restaurants, boutiques, sidewalk cafes. His paintings are extremely precise. His brick and stone houses are bathed in a shimmering light that brings out the warm colours associated with nature in the fall. Under the glow of this light, Gilles Labranche makes the brick and stone, even the wood of the windows and doors, literally vibrate by playing with shadows to give depth and relief. "Right now I play a lot with shadows and light. I paint the atmosphere and feelings that the stone and brick evoke."
In his paintings, he recreates the early morning atmosphere of inner-city neighbourhoods, when everyone is still sleeping and the streets are desert. He seems to capture that brief and unique moment when time is microcosm and even though each house contributes to the overall urban scene, none loses its individuality. And it is just this uniqueness that he attempts to capture on canvas. He takes great pains to reveal the singular characteristics of these houses which are in effect a reflection of their inhabitants.
Gilles Labranche describes himself as a loner who rarely feels the need to mingle with others. Outside of his immediate family, his world might well be defined by his studio which he leaves only to sketch those images of the city he needs to paint his canvasses. Loner or not, and even though he paints primarily for himself most eloquently and communicates his vision of the world - a world of movement, autumnal colours, light and shadow, that he feels compelled to share with others. Some express themselves through writing. Gilles Labranche creates his own poetry in the colourful atmosphere of his paintings.
Hugues de Roussan
Journalist
