To understand an artist well, it is important to follow his career path through various periods of stylistic development and through the evolution of subjects. With Boisvert, we can highlight the following periods, which led to the emergence of his personal style.
Dessins
Youth
He began drawing because he enjoyed it and was good at it. Then, he started doing portraits, the logical follow-up. He finally experimented with adding watercolour or pastel to complete his drawings, which were, so to speak, only sketches, to transform them into works of art.
Experimentation
This period comprises many phases and takes place between 1970 to approximately 1983-1984.
The first phase is without a doubt his introduction to oil painting, which he discovered and experimented with to produce landscapes and rural scenes where we recognize the influence of impressionism and of great Canadian landscape painters. Portraits and still-lifes are also very present in his work. We also recognize in these works the great cubist influences of the time.
He then went on to surrealist and symbolic abstract experimentation, including the « Nymphes » series, but only for a short period, between 1975 and 1978. Boisvert never denied his influences and it really is after 1984 that he found his style, his medium and his preferred subjects.
Achievement
Normand à l’oeuvre dans l’atelier
From the end of the 80’s, Boisvert stays relatively stable in his work in terms of technique, style and subjects. The outreach of his works and his recognition increases and outgrows Quebec.
The artist is first and foremost recognized as a sensible and expressive landscape painter. As a continuation to the great landscape painters from Quebec such as Clarence Gagnon, Marc Aurèle Fortin or Léo Ayotte from which he draws inspiration, he develops his personal and distinct style. Seeing his work, connoisseurs and informed amateurs alike declare « here’s a Boisvert ».
Inspired by his stays and getaways in the regions of Charlevoix, l’île d’Orléans and his native Mauricie, he expresses his talent for conveying atmosphere with his lights and his warm and bright colours. Boisvert would say of his paintings that they reflect his desire to communicate joy and passion away from dark colours and gloomy moods.
His flamboyant skies, often in orange hues, express the strong lights of dawn or dusk. His landscapes, often in a winter setting, and the life inhabiting them unveil his passion for hockey and a nostalgia for the winter games of his youth. He knows how to express the atmosphere and the ways of life of the people from his country.
The urban scenes of Quebec’s old city or from his native Trois-Rivières, the wild landscapes of Quebec and the still-lifes coexist with rural landscapes in his works in which some will recognize influences from impressionism and naive art.
Maturity
Toiles de grands formats à l’atelier
Since the years 2010’s, with fifty years or so of painting experience, Boisvert remains a painter recognized for his unique signature. He has not surrendered to current painting trends and his work remains coherent and strong. Maturity is expressed through the audacity of explosive colours and the prevalence of atmosphere over realism. His paintings are marked by strong brush strokes and intense lights. The varied and bright hues remain omnipresent.
He stays very active and expresses himself more and more through large-scale paintings. He creates in his preferred themes following his spontaneous inspirations. While he grants himself occasional breaks, he has not intent of stopping as long as demand for his paintings remains in Canada and in Europe.
