Leonard Jubenville

Biography

Leonard Jubenville lives on a farm outside a small French-Canadian village, Pain Court, in extreme Southwestern Ontario. He is married to Sharon, a retired secondary drama teacher, and has two sons: Corey and Julian. He is a graduate of the Ontario College of Art and Design in graphic design, and the University of Windsor in Anthropology. He is a well-known artist in the region, and has exhibited in many of the galleries of this area, and also in Michigan. His works hang in many collections of public galleries, as well as numerous corporate and private collections.

Artist's Statement:

Picasso is reported to have said, "Art is a lie by which the truth is revealed". I thought long on this, and concluded that no, a lie always remains a lie, and can never reveal the truth. Art, rather, is a different kind of truth than one usually considers when one encounters the idea of truth, as in, for example, painting, sculpture, performance, or any other form of art, is contained in itself, since the work created is its own reality, its own world. When I am painting a canvas, I am always aware of the fact that what I am doing is creating a world, a reality, if you wish, that is not real, since reality and nature are infinitely too complex to paint (nature defined as every thing in the universe seen and unseen), but rather creating a reality and world which exists within the margins of the picture planes. I am not lying to reveal the truth. I am, rather, creating a different truth, the truth of line, shape, colour, texture, tint, and tone, and how they come together and interplay on a particular canvas created with paint. The idea of creating a particular work may come from what I see and feel around me when I go sketching, but what has caught my eye, heightened my senses, or inspired me, are only a few aspects on nature and reality which have been filtered and interpreted into a painting. These ideas inform the basis of my painting, from choosing a size to fit a subject matter, the composition I lay out, the colours I choose, and the textures I paint. At some point in the process of painting this world, a reality will start to emerge, and rather than my telling the painting what I want it to be, it will tell me what I must do to complete it. The success of the work will depend on how well I have listened to the truth of this world of paint on a piece of canvas.