Carol Bernier

“Abstraction is simply a word to designate what we have not yet encountered” - Carol Bernier

That sentence, written down in Carol Bernier’s studio notebook, while in front of an Icelandic landscape, synthesizes the artistic production of the artist of the last twenty years. Born in Montreal in 1963, Bernier’s passion for the arts manifested itself at an early age and continues on today.

Bernier never begins a painting with a preconceived idea because it has been her experience that it slips away the moment she puts the first dab of colour on her canvas. It is through furthering her dialogue with her canvas that an image starts to forge in her mind.

“I try to give the impression of something mysteriously undefined and unresolved, within which all viewers can project themselves, My paintings do not represent inert objects to be viewed; rather, they open up a presence.”

Described as viscerally capturing the transience of human life, Carol Bernier is constantly trying to find a language without restrictions or compromise. Addressing painting’s eternal challenge, how to use the work’s inherent power to present the viewer with an internal reality, her paintings spark the imagination, revealing something strangely familiar, and yet ultimately intangible. Described as pure abstraction and painterly revelations, Bernier’s latest series, Foreigner on Earth, transports the viewer to another plane of thought, inviting them to take what they need from each work. Bernier is captivated by light and transparency, creating stunning compositions with layers of overlapping fields of rich reds, blues and yellows. Her brushstrokes are not revealed through a sequence that is logical or linear, but that is rather natural and spontaneous.