Sylvain Coulombe was born in Montreal in 1971. A multidisciplinary artist who has worked as a singer, composer, sculptor and architect, he currently devotes his time to painting. With a bachelor’s degree in environmental design, it was first in architecture that he began to experiment with various materials, leading him to sculpture and finally to painting. During this exploratory journey, he developed his own pictorial language in a self-taught manner and which today constitutes his distinct visual signature.
Sylvain Coulombe’s paintings are mainly portraits representing characters with complex expressions with three-dimensional effects reminiscent of masks. At first surprising, sometimes even intimidating, his characters actually reveal a gentleness and wisdom which shines through in the intensity of the looks rendered with great mastery by the artist.
“I love what is old, what has lived. These characters carry the traces of time on them, on their bodies, on life, and the stories that go with them. They reveal the obstacles of life, the idea of perseverance. In life, you have to work hard to enjoy something. And sometimes it’s heavy to carry. Each painting has a story, a meaning. But the goal is not for the viewer to see it through my story, but rather for them to create their own dialogue with the work.”