Sipping a Riesling, glinting green and gold, Schubert’s lieders playing in the background, including his famous Truite, Paul Béliveau tells me with his characteristic eloquence about the origins of his passion for painting. He also tells me about his obsession with books, words, and literature.
PAUL BÉLIVEAU : I always say I came to art through books. To tell the truth, books and art came into my life through one of my uncles, who was always very interested in paintings… He certainly knew how to reel me in… I was definitely his biggest catch !
DANY QUINE : His biggest catch ?
P.B. : My uncle was a great fly-fisherman. Sometimes he would take me with him, with my father and my cousins, seeking out the trout along the river… I can still hear the water gurgling and rushing, always reminding me of streams of effortless laughter. I can still see the strong and clear current tumbling around the pebbles and my uncle whipping lines into the surface of the water… When I think of it, it was he who, in some way, got me hooked on art…
D.Q. : What was the bait he used to catch you ?
P. B. : Sometimes, my father and my uncle would decide to go fishing alone, without me. Surely, to ease their guilty consciences, my uncle would console me by lending me some of his books, beautiful books on the great artists from the “Time Life” collection – these are the books that got me hooked ! Fascinated, I turned page after page, again and again, poring over each painting… today, my uncle probably has no idea that it is thanks to him, at least in part, that I became a painter.
D.Q. : Why is he unaware of his determining role in your career ?
P. B. : Unfortunately, he suffers from Alzheimer’s; the ravages of time have taken possession of his memory, so he does not remember fishing, or books, or even me. Age caught up with him, and now he has been plunged back into the world of his childhood…
D. Q. : Strange paradox that youth sometimes takes us back to childhood… So you owe your love of painting, books, and quotes, to your uncle.
P. B. : I also owe that mostly to my father… Much like my uncle, my father always maintained a great passion for reading and for history. Though he is almost the same age as my uncle, his memory is incredible ! He often launches into stories, filled with minute details, about the lives of great cultural figures : he loves Victor Hugo, for instance. I once brought him a Hugo novel I found during my travels in a little bookshop on the Seine, right next to the Notre Dame de Paris cathedral. I personally prefer Rimbaud, Beaudelaire, and Proust, especially. Regardless, I owe my love of reading to my father.
D. Q. : To see your work and your studio – one wall of which is literally covered in books – one would be surprised if you did NOT love reading !
P. B. : I read a lot, it’s true, but the way I read is not particularly orthodox…
D.Q. : Really ? Why ?
P.B. :I sort of read by fragments. I often skip pages, begin in the middle or the end; and sometimes I don’t finish reading books I began. I essentially adhere to Daniel Pennac’s tenets of reading, from his book Comme un roman , in which he delves into the concept of the freedom of the readers.
D.Q. : Other than Pennac, Rimbaud, Beaudelaire and Proust, which other authors are you fondest of ?
P.B. :I love the classics, like those you mentioned, but I do in fact have a preference for history and biographies.
D.Q. : This might explain your love of quotations in your painting.
P.B. : Partially, yes, but my interest in books goes beyond their content. I collect them, I pile them up, I photograph them, I paint them, I even invent them… In fact, it is the whole book itself – its essence -, that I love; I consider this object to be exceeding meaningful… I get a great amount of pleasure from occasionally browsing through libraries or bookstores, of touching the worn leather, examining the yellowed pager, the faded covers and the inscriptions and the first few pages… When I hold an old book in my hands, I feel I am holding a piece of history. For example, I have on my studio bookshelf a Bossuet book published in Paris in 1815. I like to imagine this book fresh off the presses on the shelves of the bookstore in the City of Lights while, there in the streets, at the very same moment, the fall of Napoleon was taking place. I also find the scent of ink absolutely intoxicating, and I love the sight of letters time is erasing bit by bit. I should also mention my love for typography, which is also certainly due to my father.
D. Q. : Your father was typographer ?
P. B. : Naturally curious and incapable of staying in one place, my father basically did everything : accountant, inspector, plumber, he was even a butcher ! While he was working as a butcher, part of his job was to make up the signs announcing the coming week’s sales. So in the evenings, at home, he would sometimes paint the sales announcements out on big rolls of paper. I can still see him at the kitchen table, with his ruler, his pencil tucked behind his ear, his pots of red and black gouache, carefully tracing out so many letters and numbers. I was completely engrossed by the paper coming to life under his able hands… That was before my uncle “hooked me with fly-fishing”, before colour television… At that time, Boum Boum Geoffrion and Henri Richard flew across the ice of the Montreal Forum – his big brother Maurice wasn’t playing anymore -, while I, far from wanting to put on the Sainte-Flanelle jersey, watched my father’s hand glide over the glazed paper and dreamed of the day when I could be in his place… till the day he allowed me to paint in the letters he had traced out ! I remember it well; the work had to be done before the Canadians hockey game began, which came on at 8, but I was so absorbed… I can still hear René Lecavalier’s voice commenting on the first face-off, and I hadn’t finished the lettering, didn’t even have time for my bath… I didn’t mind. I preferred to spread the paint over the white paper, my own ice rink… My father could take a break ! I would finish the work; that was all that mattered. It’s amazing how absorbed we can be when we love something !
D. Q. : It takes a lot of patience, of minutiae and perseverance to carry out such tasks; it must have been rare for a child, wasn’t it ? Do you think you also got that from your father ?
P. B. : I certainly got the patience and the perseverance from my mother, who was also very tenacious; her love was unconditional and she wanted nothing but her family’s health and happiness. I can still hear her saying that I should be a graphic designer rather than a painter, because graphic designers make more money. I could always paint in my spare time, like on Sundays, she would tell me. I didn’t tell her, but I decided to make every day a Sunday.
D. Q. : So you decided to be a painter without your mother’s approval.
P. B. : Yes, but she obviously supported my decision, because she believed in me… During all my years of learning, her faith, patience and tenacity meant the most to me, and still do; my mother’s eyes, though tired, are still what I need most to go on, bacause, in those eyes, there is unconditional love, and for me art is unconditional, like my mother’s eyes…
Today, my mother strains over my paintings, for she can no longer see very well due to macular degeneration… My father carries a cane, a far cry from his fishing rod… My uncle certainly has no recollection of the both precise and bread movement required to make the bait flit over the current. As for me, I don’t visit the riverbanks as often as I did forty years ago. Nevertheless, I think I still know what fly-fishing is…
D. Q. : Oh ? What’s fly-fishing, then ?
P. B. : It’s like painting ! It’s like love ! It’s like life ! Fly-fishing is made up of great expectations, of hopes and of dreams. But one day, when you’re not expecting it, you get one bite, two, even three ! So, frantically, we bring back into life everthing we catch, keep it for a moment, then let it go… and life goes on. Life is the wave that flows down between the pines, meanders along the rock and gets lost in the valley, lower down. It is the ever-renewed riverbed. It is you, it is me and it is everyone else. It’s my father. It’s my mother. It’s my uncle…
