Latendresse has lived in Los Angeles since 2008, and he was instantly mesmerized by its vibrant culture and landscape. He sees Southern and Central California as a “place of constant reinvention and visual stimulus.” Latendresse has been involved with arts and culture throughout his entire professional life – as an artist, a curator, a writer, a critic, and a director of cultural centers and programs. Upon moving to Los Angeles from Canada, his painting practice took a back seat to other pursuits. That changed when the pandemic arrived, giving him the time and space to create new work and bring life into the void of that cloistered time.
Based on places in central California that the artists knows and loves, the landscapes comprising “California Nature, Unseen” are dreamlike and sometimes surreal. These enchanted vistas continue the tradition of California landscape painting in a bold, contemporary way. They are realized with rich and often Fauvist colors – including a masterful use of yellow and purple hues – and scintillating dappled textures. Latendresse paints only with palette knives, and the rich swaths of acrylic paint put forth a tactile quality suggesting you are physically entering into the spaces he has imagined.
Latendresse says, “Some people compare the painting to impressionism, pointillism, or even expressionism. And while I understand the comparison, for me the true inspiration lies elsewhere. It was photography, specifically the reference images I took in the rolling hillsides of the central California coast, that became my springboard into a freshly perceived—and unperceived reality. During the existential crisis of the pandemic, these paintings were my personal exploration into the true nature of reality—the seen and unseen, the multiplicity of meanings which merge and collide, and can only be described as consciousness.”
Pictured: “Paso Robles Woods II” © Sylvain Latendresse
https://www.sylvainlatendressepaintings.com/
