Jacques background is accounting, while his passion is art in a multitude of mediums. Practicing his craft for 25+ years he has woven an intricate tapestry of artwork that has a range many would be intrigued by. He loves the process of working with his inspiration - where he grew up in Northern Quebec, and the places he likes to travel.

Inspired by landscapes, although the longer you look at these compositions the more you begin to see the thin layers that he uses to 'have the images create themselves.' That the layers he applied previously shine through the layers painted thinly on top. This he admits must be from his experience with working with pastels.

Primarily Jacques uses oil paint, but he also works with watercolour, sculpture, pastel and a range of other mediums to capture the atmosphere, the emotion evoked by nature. To catch the essence of a space and time. Amongst his mediums he pauses time with his compositions of stillness.

Podcast Credits:

Carolyn Botelho/Jacques Descoteaux

Adobe Creative Suite

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I discovered this genius in high school, or was it somewhere in the collective consciousness that I saw his melting clocks? I’m not certain, but I know when I found this eclectically strange human with his peculiar moustache, his Spanish background, I was hooked. At the time I was getting into the band The Doors, and Aldous Huxley’s Doors of Perception, Brave New World, and The Perennial Philosophy.

It was an electric time of innovation and industry that was buzzing and thriving with creativity during a very traumatic political period. Let’s take a deep dive on these Artists and what was so radical a century ago, It was a period of time that was chaotic, progressive, and downright controversial. With an active movement of imagination becoming a source of spiritual renewal. There were veins of international networks exploring poetry, writing, philosophy, politics, and social change brought about by the rapid urbanization, and advancements in science and technology.

There was a fever frenzy pace that was happening simultaneously and independently. A concentration of fertile energetic ideas that challenged the establishment. There was an urgency that hadn’t been seen before. An almost neurotic romanticism during this time, it was dynamic, and even a little bit sexy. How multiple cultures, countries and climates were collectively collaborating, composing, and creating. They were pushing the envelope, challenging the critics, causing riots, and even shocking the bourgeois aesthetic – Duchamp’s Urinal readymade placed nonchalantly inside the gallery signed R. Mutt.

Podcast Credits: Carolyn Botelho

Audio Links from: Adobe Podcast
Podcast by Carolyn Botelho

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Exploring Art for 50+ years has proven to Anne MaClear that painting will always have it's challenges, and new ways of seeing. MaClear looks to find unexplored avenues to go down that provide new opportunities. Having the educational framework in her bones of numerous classes ranging from pastels, oil stick, embroidery, encaustic, wax, oil, and textile to name a few.

From her admiration of fellow Artists Mark Rothko and Robert Motherwell - two pioneers from the Modernist art movement; more specifically Pop, and Abstract Expressionism. MaClear punctuates her practice with flourishes from these two Artists. So subtly and pervasively, that they have an uncanny resemblance, but one that is not inherently obvious. This is a skill Anne has developed over decades in her creative practice.

Join me as we discuss the mediums, the message; what being Canadian addsto her practice, and what a little bit of chaos brings to artwork. How titles are chosen; and how often people assume Abstract Art is easier, when in fact it is quite the opposite. Anne shares how and why she is intrigued to take on this style.

Connect with Anne MaClear: https://propellerartgallery.com/members/anne-mcalear/

Podcast Credits:

Anne MaClear/Carolyn Botelho

Audio Links from: Adobe Podcast
Podcast by Carolyn Botelho

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How did I fall into this obsession? It really was an accident, something I never intended. When I studied Art in high school there were so many artists that fascinated me. Mainly from the modern art movement. I remembered Andy Warhol's soup cans and silkscreens; but they weren't anything special.

It wasn't until much later that I realized we had similarities that went beyond any artistic technique or style. My family was in no way similar to Mr Warhola's religious upbringing - far from it. My family is very British. What we shared is a little horrific.

What my fascination did spark for me was a kinship with Andy Warhol. I wanted to know more about his background, his life in the 60s' and 70s'. Where he discovered his eclectic style of using consumerism as a motif. Join me as we do a deeply different dive on Andy Warhol. One that feels a little bit more real than what the history books are telling you.

Thank you so much for listening to The Creatively Thinking Podcast! We are so happy you popped by, I will be for sure make sure I give a shout out to you in one of my future episodes. Please remember to like, share, and comment where ever you get your podcasts.

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Beverley Daniels Part 2 goes deeper into discussing how she has explored and developed her technique as a multi-disciplinary artist. In the last decade she has been focusing on dissecting and combining found objects. Allowing them to share the space almost that can sometimes result in an argument, they are separated until they can sit comfortably together.

This is the area that Daniels loves to be involved in. It's the energy, the movement, the discussion between the mediums, how they relate, how they speak to each other to say what cannot be said. It becomes more than what it appears, while at the same time remaining quiet. Using the ecological grief as a tool to be something more for the observer.

Beverley has had a number of exhibitions that explore this dynamic. Using upcycled materials that become intrinsically more than they ever would have when left at the curb. The flyers, ads, and banners, that arrive unbidden at our door almost daily we unthinkingly put in our trash; Beverley uses to weave into contemporary designs that will surprise you.

Podcast Credits:

Beverley Daniels/Carolyn Botelho

Audio Links from: Adobe Podcast
Podcast by Carolyn Botelho

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Beverley Daniels is a multi-disciplinary Artist that found her passion light up when she finds materials while going about her day in Toronto, Canada. Finding them incidentally, and rather intrusively, she is given these nuanced prints as brightly coloured advertisements; and stumbles onto interesting finds that people put outside their homes to give away.

Being intrigued to discover and combine these objects into woven and fused plastics, Using materials destined for landfills: ribbons, lawn signs, scrap vinyl upholstery, old film. Cutting, weaving, and gluing or fusing them. This was originally an Ecological anxiety, now Daniels prefers them. In summary Daniels loves garbage.

Dabbling in collages as her medium when she attended Ontario College of Art and Design, now she has been working in multi-disciplinary as her primary medium for the last decade. When she feels the nudge to go in a certain direction she goes there. Feeling deeply satisfied in recognizing the beauty in discarded objects, the plethora is overwhelming, and the unpredictability confounds.

To Connect with Beverley Daniels: https://www.instagram.com/beverleydaniels5/

Podcast Credits:

Beverley Daniels/Carolyn Botelho

Audio Links from: Adobe Podcast
Podcast by Carolyn Botelho

Thank you so much for listening to The Creatively Thinking Podcast! We are so happy you popped by, I will be for sure make sure I give a shout out to you in one of my future episodes. Please remember to like, share, and comment where ever you get your podcasts.

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This was going to be one of the most exciting times in my life. I had decided this before I even stepped inside the building. I was about to embark on my post-secondary education at a school where the Group of Seven had gone. Those god-like Painters of our glorious nation known as Canada. This is my essay to you, declaring my profound experience of being an Abstract painter and how it led me to become an Artist interviewer. To want to go behind the scenes, undercover, into the inner circle of the imagination.

What really touched me the most about this time in my life, was how much Art really spoke to me; I could feel the tangible living passion these Artists had poured into their artwork. I was volunteering at the Art Gallery of Ontario on the weekends, and being consumed with Artwork all the time was really exhilarating. There truly was an igniting energy that I could feel. It was in the faculty, the students, the art on the walls, the lectures, everywhere.

One of the most influential aspects of Picasso’s work for me was his Cubist period. Seeing how he deconstructed forms and reassembled them from multiple perspectives taught me that art doesn't have to mirror reality—it can interpret and transform into unrecognizable shapes and perspectives. In essence, Picasso didn’t just influence how I create; he helped shape why I create. He showed me that art can be a means of personal evolution, emotional expression, and cultural conversation—all at once.

Podcast Credits:

Audio Links from https://freemusicarchive.org/
Podcast by Carolyn Botelho

Thank you so much for listening to The Creatively Thinking Podcast! We are so happy you popped by, I will be for sure make sure I give a shout out to you in one of my future episodes. Please remember to like, share, and comment where ever you get your podcasts.

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Having such a curious and inventive mind Libby Hague has been a prolific Toronto based Artist specializing in video and large scale print installations. She has taught printmaking at Sheridan College, and is known for her paper collage and constructed installations; that deal with disaster, hope and the precariousness of consequence. Understanding the resilience and fragility of paper Libby knows this is why it is the perfect medium for expression.

Born in St Thomas Ontario, and growing up in Montreal, Quebec; Libby has been creating sculptures and stories of contradiction, violence, love, death, disease, and vulnerability. Moving freely amongst these narratives has given her a unique vantage point as a storyteller. From here she remembers as a child how her passion grew with the fragility and strength of paper. Cutting up and pasting characters from magazines and catalogues.

Collecting and navigating her passion for literature Libby shares how her love of reading changed how she saw the world, how her love transcended language and boundaries of relationships and characters. How moving amongst these narratives gave her the opportunity to speak through paper about dialogues she finds in the environment around her. How they may be obscure, but there is a thread of reality running through all of them.

To connect with Libby Hague: http://libbyhague.com/basic.html

Podcast Credits:

Audio Links from https://freemusicarchive.org/
Podcast by Carolyn Botelho

*In Greek mythology, Cassandra was a Trojan princess known for her prophetic abilities. She was cursed by the god Apollo so that while her prophecies were always true, no one would ever believe them.

Thank you so much for listening to The Creatively Thinking Podcast! We are so happy you popped by, I will be for sure make sure I give a shout out to you in one of my future episodes. Please remember to like, share, and comment where ever you get your podcasts.

Support the show