Conversations In Art
Conversations In Art
Conversations with Mark Thibeault
Join Host Moe Kafer as she interviews Abstract Impressionist & guitar maker Mark Thiebault.
See Mark's work here https://www.markthibeault.com/
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In a beautiful mountain town in Northern BC, halfway between prince George and prince Rupert on highway 16. Smithers BC is the home to many, very talented artists. And I've decided to sit down and conversation with some of them and find out. Just what makes them tick. Welcome to. Conversations in art.
Moe Kafer:Today artist, mark Teebo has invited me into his studio in the central park building and Smithers BC. It's just off highway 16. So you'll hear the cars zooming past. Mark is an abstract painter musician music teacher and guitar maker Mark Thibeault. Can you spell your name for me
Mark Thiebault:Sure. It's a mark with a K and Teebo T H I B E a U L. There's a lot of letters in there that you don't hear.
Moe Kafer:Where are you from?
Mark Thiebault:Originally from Belle river, Ontario. Just outside of Windsor.
Moe Kafer:How did you find your way to Smithers?
Mark Thiebault:Move to Vancouver in I think 95 and worked at a guitar factory down there and met my, ex-wife Jenny Lester, and she had family up here. So we came up here and visited her family and just fell in love with the valley. You take that, just come over hungry hill there and you just that's it, you're sold you're here. Yeah.
Have you always been artistic?
Mark Thiebault:Yeah, it's always been music building guitars and art, and got a guitar building came when I moved to Vancouver, started working for John Lariviere,
Moe Kafer:So you've got a lot going on with your art and the guitar making, and you play in a band called hungry hill. Yeah so a lot of creativity
Mark Thiebault:yeah, exactly. I think that life often afforded those opportunities. If you're open to them, if you just go with it and trust it, it can get difficult at times, but it does it seems to roll itself out for you,
Moe Kafer:Absolutely. I mean, that's what, art's all about. Opening yourself up to something.
Mark Thiebault:Yeah. I it's really just being receptive to different opportunities, just recognizing that being inspired and recognizing potential in that moment, I think that's largely what artists do, whether they're at the canvas or whether they're making life decisions, if you're doing it from from this feeling that it's right, then you go with. trust it.
Moe Kafer:Tell me about your art.
Mark Thiebault:It's abstract expressionist in nature. It's it's funny how, like the work can feel very different from one piece to the next at times, but then when I hang them Uh, gallery or in my studio as we're in right now, I see similarities in them. And some of these were completed two years ago and some more recently, I think that's the most recent one there. I think like your signature, that's your way of making marks, I think that abstract expressionism is inspired. By the marks that I'm making. so I build on that, I start to build on that without any preconception as to what the piece is gonna look like, as a matter of fact, when I'm going out and just walking and taking visual inventory of things, I try not to study things too much. Just try to get little quick snapshots of things to be inspired by. So that when I go to the canvas, it's just, those things will come in and it's surprising how much it does. It does work its way into the work. So again, it's that full trusting, and it's funny how, when you try and prescribe something to a painting, I could look at these paintings around us right now, and I can tell you which marks were forced and intentional and done over again, and just, you have to really trust that. So it's really based on that. So you just really don't know where it's going. And hopefully in the end, it's something that you can live with for awhile.
Moe Kafer:So if I understand correctly, you go out and collect little bits and pieces of inspiration and then you come to the canvas and throw them down.
Mark Thiebault:Yeah. Without the idea that you're throwing them down, you're just moving with the canvas. And sometimes if you can't get moving, I guess it's like a writer, you just start writing. Train of thought or whatever you need to start writing. So often I'll do that on the approach, a canvas and just start sketching and start moving. Just moving with something in your hand, that's making a mark and then ideally you'll start to get inspired by that and you start to, you personally, start to leave and then that's the ideal, that's the perfect moment when you're no longer. And you're just reacting to the piece in front of you and building on that.
Moe Kafer:Hmm. That's really interesting. are you using multimedia or are you working in building layers of paint?
Mark Thiebault:It is actually, I do that quite a bit, build up layers. I liked the idea of a piece that actually goes. Farther than left, I'm not putting down. And then you feel like you can travel into the piece. So you so in this case, this piece behind me here, it has a lot of textural stuff, and then you just keep building on that and building on that. And I'm hoping for that moment of energy where you can step aside and see, I think that's done, but yeah. Multimedia hits that pieces. And acrylic, I use a lot of ink. This one's an ink acrylic and it's like a wax stick. It's called a Prisma stick. It's like a colored pencil, great stuff. And that's mostly what I use it for an ink, but I do love oil. So I've been playing with oil quite a bit, but because it worked so quickly I can't wait for things that to dry I half the time you might have to get in there and just keep moving things around which results in some interesting marks. That's what happens with this ink here and, I'm pulling it around and pulling it with the acrylic paint and painting over areas that are still very wet. But when you start to do that with oil you can end up with this kind of gray blobs sometimes, but sometimes you can make that work,
Moe Kafer:I would imagine moving between the different mediums. Each one will make you either take your time or make you sit with things and contemplate. Is that right
Mark Thiebault:yeah. Oh, for sure. It, the medium you're working with will change your process like this. You both paper that. Here on these pieces. It was the first I've ever used this stuff and it's almost like a Mylar texture. I've got that. But it I've never used anything that reacts quite like this does the, how the medium kind of sits on top of it and puddles and then moves around. that again, inspires your a mark making, so I found that I was approaching that a little bit. And then I would say like watercolor paperworks, just as soon as you put something down, it's just, it's so great in, there's no going back over it. So with you, I could wipe it off. I could do it again. And that leaves traces of the edits, and it just gives that volume and that depth, what I was talking about with the other pieces.
Moe Kafer:You said earlier that you get glimpses of things. Is that where you get your inspiration and how does that start
Mark Thiebault:yeah. It starts by like really putting in the time. Okay. It starts by just approaching the canvas and making a mark, really, it really does. Like I said, I do a lot of visual inventory. Things in a different way. I was writing up the study. So that when I do approach the canvas that I am ready to just start mark making it's partly a cathartic process to, we've had a bit of a rough year and a half, as we all have. It's funny how that changed. My mark-making too. It's like communicating, it's like talking it's what I need to do to understand myself a little bit and maybe even communicate myself a little bit more than I can do with music or with words or writing or whatever, it's just it's its own language and it feels like it's a language that I resonate with and I feel comfortable with.
Moe Kafer:Do you ever feel like art kicks your ass?
Mark Thiebault:All the time? Yeah. In one painting, like it'll kick your ass and then you'll feel good about it for a moment. You'll feel like a hero for a couple of days and you look back at it two days later and it's what was I thinking? it's the ones that really stand the test of time. I can look at pieces that may be very different. How I'm working now, but I can look at them and say, there's something there, like it's, I still feel good about, there may be some weak moments, but it feels really good somehow. And that's generally when the quick mark making and the kind of mindless mark making, when I'm not there. imposing myself and my ego upon the work that the work becomes stronger and it has a longer appeal,
Moe Kafer:What do you mean about imposing your ego on the work? That's a really interesting thing to say.
Mark Thiebault:To think that I know better than all the things that are going through me, I'd rather. Be a channel for all that, I'd rather be a conduit for all that inspiration and aggravation and whatever it is that is going on, I'd rather leave myself and I'd rather not spell it out and say, this is, again, it's that language, right? It's I'm not going to write about it. I'm not going to do it, but I will express something, So the ego would be, you're going in, you're thinking about what are our critics going to think? What are galleries going to think? What do I think of this? What do my peers think of it when you can let all that go and just work and make honest marks There's some times when I get to a piece to a certain point, and I think that does just need this little bit of something right here. And it'll complete the piece it'll feel balanced or it'll feel, formally correct somehow. And sometimes that just changes the painting completely and it kicks your ass and you're starting over again, all new canvas. For the length of time I'm with that painting. I tried to keep my intent out of it because I don't think I know better than there's no way that I can take everything that's going on and try and channel it down intentionally. And, some colors that just happen on the canvas as a result of. Making this mud, and then all of a sudden, there's this beautiful color that kind of comes through it. I can, I probably couldn't think about how to make that color or even to put it in that area. But you do have to recognize when those elements are coming together. So you have to have some sense of formal aesthetic and that kind of thing, and to recognize that's the biggest thing, with the gallery in two rivers, I talked about being a witness. And I think, that's a larger part of what my responsibility is when I'm at the canvas is to just start moving with it and then identify when things are working. Don't question why they're working and don't try and steer from that point, remove myself again and allow it to just keep flowing.
Moe Kafer:Oh, right. Okay. That's what you mean when you're talking about abstract expressionism? I think I get it now.
Mark Thiebault:Yeah.
Moe Kafer:Have you seen your work change over the COVID lockdowns?
Mark Thiebault:At the end. Yeah. I started a whole different series, not intentionally, just I started to recognize there were different marks, whereas up to that point, up to that January or February of last year, I was making large gestural marks, just very confident, large gestural marks, but then as things. Feeling like things were closing in and things were closing. And I just don't know my making became a little smaller and a little bit more not calculated, but definitely almost doodle like just still mindness, but smaller it, I just couldn't approach the canvas with the same energy. I tell people, it felt like I was dancing at a funeral, you're approaching this thing canvas and you were training to be large with it. It just didn't, it just didn't feel right. It just felt like I needed to work smaller. It's still being absent. Try to remove myself from it, but still channel things, it's not completely cathartic process, but I'm still gonna just move. And those movements just become smaller.
Moe Kafer:Are you a meticulous planner when you start painting, where you do, you just grab a thing and. Start.
Mark Thiebault:It's grab a thing and start going for the most part? Yeah. House paint is great because its. Cheap and because I do so much editing and I can just keep painting over things and painting over things. Sometimes there's an energy that happens almost immediately in a painting. And sometimes you work on a piece for months into it has that feel. But yeah, the materials usually are what's to my right, with whatevers, whenever there's hand, whatever I want to just grab and start paints or inks or whatever, And even colors. I try not to be too prescriptive with the colors. I'll try and trust that the pallet will find itself or I'll be able to identify when the colors are working together or whether it needs to be steered in a certain direction. But that's a decision I make after that moment that you approached the canvas and you start making marks and a lot of marks and pieces starts to come together, ideally, and then it becomes a little bit more prescriptive.
Moe Kafer:You say you're always collecting inspiration. Is that from your environment are you inspired by the bulky valley do you still feel connected to the place
Mark Thiebault:oh, absolutely. Yeah. Living in Telkwa, there's this trail right behind us. And I tried to get up on that trail two or three times a week and it's a very grounding thing. There's a lot of appreciation when I'm walking along the river there for the natural beauty that we have around us an observation of its fragility so then when I come back to the studio all those feelings and all those images are there. That's the connection, and it may not come out looking exactly like the landscape, but so it's got elements of it.
Moe Kafer:Do you have a favorite piece that you've created or does that change all the time? Yeah.
Mark Thiebault:I think it changes all the time. I have some, yeah, and I think the. They all have their own little character and something that I really like about this one back here that was at the beginning of the COVID, with this bet that was ruled out on the floor here and just working right on the floor and very loose. So there's almost like a, kind of a cartoon character about that piece, which is not in all my pieces, but it's in a few of them. So yeah, I think every piece again is cartoony feel about this one. I didn't think I would have. Titling pieces as much as I am lately. It was funny after I graduated from university and up until just maybe two years ago, everything was untitled. And lately part of the process now is looking at the piece and trying to not be too prescriptive with the title, but still try and bring something together that all that mark-making how it makes you feel or what it may remind you of. But without being too prescriptive, so I've been enjoying that challenge, whereas before I was just like, the work should speak for itself, but then I realized, but that's just a whole nother dimension of the work if you title it, and if you keep that title accessible enough for people to come in and take that title and, complete themselves, that the viewer is always the final author, is the final, the person that puts it together. So we're just painting and putting it out there and hope. But that happens.
Moe Kafer:Tell me about your education. You said you went to art school.
Mark Thiebault:I did. Yep. It's a university of Windsor. That's my fine arts in painting and drawing. And it was at that time, an incredible program. They had a sculpture department painting printmaking. Yeah. At the school, it's like a Foundry where you can do casting. So it was really good. It was a great program, great artists that were teaching there. Great professors. And my fourth year university, I did mostly sound installations multimedia was picking up at that time. And I was working with other visual artists that were musicians. So we were doing large performances and I would do artwork for the projections behind the stage. And I would do stage props and stuff like that. So it was like we were playing music, but we were in this this one. Theatrical setting, that was with video projections and sculptures and everything going on stage with us.
Moe Kafer:That all sounds amazing or wish they had art school for older people.
Mark Thiebault:Yeah, it's funny. I went, I worked at general motors. So I went back and said, it's an adult student. And I was checking MacArthur. He was like, I had no, he's a great guy. Chuck will be, he was like 60 something and he was just loving it. everybody in the school was just so inspired by Chuck going back to school. And he was just, he was great.
Moe Kafer:Are you going international?
Mark Thiebault:There's interest around the world. I wouldn't say around the world, but in London I've got to get gallery mean Pell fine art. That's carrying my stuff. And this is just since last April. So just in the past year. And so she's showing my stuff and. Really developing that relationship, but she's got a great gallery there. She's been doing a lot of online stuff. She just opened a gallery last, September when they just started with a major lockdown. So she opened up a gallery, then it was a big lockdown there, the gallery is in Notting Hill. Yeah. That's what a friend of mine just she was a guitar camp student and she just visited the gallery and she lives right in that area. And she said, it's a really nice location and pretty excited. And then just this publication Art folio annual just came out. It's the second edition of it. I got featured in that one of my pieces is in there. So yeah, I feel good about it's validation on some level,
Moe Kafer:It's curious, you know, because a lot of artists create art for art's sake. But at the end of the day, you've got to pay for all of the tools and all of the stuff that goes with it. So there is a business of art.
Mark Thiebault:Yeah.
Moe Kafer:There must also be some kudos when somebody else likes your work enough to pay money for it. How do you get your word out about your art how do you get people to notice you.
Mark Thiebault:Instagram was a big thing, I think I just opened up an Instagram account like two years ago and just started putting feelers up there now. It built largely on the show that I had here in 2017, I think, and just recognize that people liked my stuff. I think I sold like over for half the show that the opening night or something, so I thought I need to revisit this and do more of it, and it felt right to do more of it. I teach music, I teach music part-time and still building guitars and the odd sale, of art here and there, but it doesn't stop me from making art because that's. Need to do, so just keep putting the feelers out there and just hope that just hope that I can keep making art
Moe Kafer:Does selling art motivate you to paint?
Mark Thiebault:It'd be nice. And I think about that occasionally, but then when you think about I've got to sell, then you start thinking about what's sellable, and then it changes the way I at least approach the canvas or approach something. I think about, this is probably a bit more colorful, accessible palette, and I think we can't do that with our, I just have to trust that same momentum that happened in 2017, where it seemed I got really good feedback. I've been getting shows from that and getting solo shows from that and residencies from that, that's probably validation enough, and then they just continue on making the work.
Moe Kafer:I mean, really? You can never tell what's going to be sellable. Artists have worked and never sold a painting until after their. Long gone. I mean, it's interesting to think about how many artists have died. Without ever being recognized or selling a painting. And then years later, There are paintings are selling for millions
Mark Thiebault:that's crazy. I was just listening to the podcast and they were talking about that and how sometimes it takes generations for people to see the how the work was relevant in that. Biographical of that time
But then it's also quite curious when you look at. You know, artists who can stick a white paper bag on a white wall in an empty room. And that's the end all in Beale.
Mark Thiebault:And the, you know what, I'm fine with not getting that. It's funny. There were such that piece where the banana was duct taped that museum. Just recently. And I have no idea. I don't even want to question that, but I don't want to even think about now because I don't think it's just not where my head is at that conceptual side of work. And like how that makes sense. And maybe it does and that's okay. That's okay. If there's a group of people that say that this does something for me. Yeah. That's wonderful. Regardless of what your art is, if it's enriching, somebody life somehow, including your own, then that's a good thing to take away, yeah.
Moe Kafer:Well, mark, I wish you the greatest success. I think your art is wonderful and it's been a real pleasure speaking with you. Can you let our listeners know where they can find more about your work
Mark Thiebault:Yeah. It's mark marktibeault.com. M a R K T H I B E a U L t.com.
Thanks for joining us. And next week we'll be talking to artists, Leah pipe. Conversations in art is brought to you by Roadhouse Smithers. Comfort food. Well-traveled. If you're traveling on route 16, you definitely want to stop into Roadhouse. It's got a beautiful ambiance. Inspired cocktails. And probably the best chicken sandwich you'll ever taste in your life. I check them out on www.roadhouse-smithers.com.
