In January 2021, the second COVID lockdown had just come into effect.
So, at age 56, Steven Brunelle opted to create a studio space on the second floor of his Lafontaine home, making it suited to working on a new series of paintings that he was imagining.
“He had on hand some three-by-four-foot canvases,” Midland Cultural Centre chair John Hartman writes in an essay outlining an exhibit featuring Brunelle's work. “He also had a series of six smaller black and white drawings, made in the winter of 2016, of subjects that he felt had promise.
"Understanding that his creative process would involve as much time looking at his work as painting it, he made the studio a place where he could sit and listen to music, read and watch TV, as well as paint.”
Now, those pieces are part of the Midland Cultural Centre’s Indigenous art gallery, which is located in the facility first-floor atrium. The Indigenous exhibit space officially opened last year in response to the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report.
A prominent artist himself, Hartman says Brunelle’s idea was to use strong colour as an important part of these new paintings without abandoning the graphic power of the black in his studies.
“Steven felt that in his past work he might have been trying too hard,” Hartman explains. “He now said to himself, ‘Steve, this is just art’. The extended, uninterrupted time he had in front of him, and the new studio space allowed him to relax and to paint in a way that came naturally to him.”
Adds Brunelle of his latest creative spurt: “It took 57 years and a pandemic but now I’m ready to go. The shapes just come to me like a vision. If you’re patient, it will come to you.”
Steven's father, Richard Brunelle, was born and raised in Lafontaine and is descended from the Drummond Island Métis. His mother Marie Brunelle (nee Chausee) is from the Kitigan Zibi First Nation and was fostered as a young teenager to a family in Lafontaine.
Having been separated from her birth family, Marie nonetheless devoted her adult life to learning the traditional crafts of quill work, moose hair tufting and beading design. She passed her knowledge on to many others in the local community and to her children.
Hartman says the younger Brunelle’s path as an artist took a circuitous route.
His high school art teacher encouraged him to draw but he later only lasted part of one year as an art student at Georgian College in Barrie, Hartman notes. After dropping out of art school he moved to Toronto and worked in hospitality. In 1988, he returned to the Lafontaine area and by the 1990s he was working in construction and landscaping.
“His father encouraged him to paint in the manner of the great painters of the Woodland School, but Steven was not interested at this point, rather, he was making black and white abstract drawings,” Hartman recalls.
“Steven began to paint in 2015 when he was running the Painted Turtle, a gallery space in Lafontaine. He made paintings of Georgian Bay landscapes, painted from memory which included animals and birds. Steven was remembering ‘back in history when animals could speak.’”
As for the pieces featured in the current exhibit, Hartman says the central image is painted in outline with black paint, understanding that the final image will float on the white space of the canvas.
“Different story elements are then painted in strong colour into the centre of the overall image, as they occur to him,” Hartman explains.
“As viewers we intuit that there is a story being told in each painting, but we are left on our own to float through each one, making our own discoveries.”
The exhibition will be open for viewing at the MCC from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday to Friday until July 2 and online here.
