Genevieve Gaudreau
My current body of work explores my relationship and experience with loss and its resulting grief. Through mixed media collage, I try to understand and examine my complicated feelings of loss. Nostalgic imagery has been a prevalent theme throughout my work, and I continue to be drawn to it for its romanticized nature. Making this work has felt like making one self-portrait after another; it has felt like looking at a memory that does not actually exist, although the longing for it to be wished into reality does.
“It hasn’t been important to me for people to completely understand my conceptual ideas when interacting and looking at my work. I’m interested in the different things it evokes for people, and often I’m curious what they think it’s about. I don't look at it deeper than that. Each new person who looks at my work will bring their own interpretation and life experiences of what it could be, but the work will always stay the same for me.”
“Experiencing the loss of my mother has had a fairly large impact on my work in the last few years. But I think it’s more than just that initial loss that I have felt inclined to make work about. There are so many sublayers to grief, and I think my interest in connecting with all parts of it has led me to where I am today when I am working in the studio. Losing my mom changed my life in a lot of different ways. It’s changed how I interact with my work, but also, it’s changed the content. I think that, combined with my own experience as a queer woman and my identity, plays a large role in all the work I make. I like to think that everything I make feels like a self-portrait.”
“My relationship with art and working in the studio has definitely changed the way I process my emotions or thoughts. Often when I feel inconsolable, I turn to making work to make sense of my inner world. I feel like my work has become the place where I can be as emotional as I want to be or need to be without having to say a word out loud. In that way, it has given me this new way of experiencing myself and my life that I wasn't able to experience before I became an artist. It’s having a conversation with myself on paper, it’s looking at me while I am looking back.”
Like Holding Gravel; mixed media collage; 11” x 11”.
(Love Is Like A); mixed media collage on arches; 12-5/8” x 11-3/4”
There's Only So Much Letting Go; mixed media collage; 7-3/8” x 7-7/8”
To Feel Your Embrace Once More; mixed media collage on arches;
They Long To Be) Close To You; mixed media collage; 8” x 10”.
For Us, I Will; mixed media collage; 6” x 6”.