Join us for the next edition of Curated Conversations | Looking Out: Canadian Artists in Bermuda and Isabel McLaughlin Finding Form with exhibition curator Dr Sara Thom.
We will also hear from Canadian artist Bernard Aimé Poulin, in discussion on his experience and the influence Bermuda had in his process of creating the artwork featured in the current exhibition.
Date: Wednesday, June 26, 2024
Time: 5:30 – 7:30pm
Location: Masterworks Museum of Bermuda Art, Butterfield Gallery
Entry: free for members | $10 for non-members
Bernard Aimé Poulin
Originally from Windsor, Ontario, Canada (1945), Bernard Poulin begins selling artworks at 14.
Aware that he cannot earn a living as a beginning painter, Bernard graduates from Ottawa University’s Bilingual Teacher’s College. He is 19. He then undertakes a 15 year career in teaching and creating special education programs for children in need – this, at a time when special education does not officially exist. At 20 he is the director of the boys’ section of a treatment home and founder of a private school to serve that institution’s needs. He ends this phase of his working life in 1977, after spending the last 5 years teaching in a psychiatric hospital school he helped build, as well as being a member of several psychiatric teams and a guest lecturer at several universities. Despite his heavy schedule as an educator, he does not fail to hone his skills as a painter. This he focuses on after his wards are asleep…
Ironically, it was this demanding work which first introduced Bernard to Bermuda. One night in 1967, at a gathering with friends, he appears seriously exhausted. And as only the best of friends would do, they pool their money and send him off on the first flight out of Ottawa the next morning. That plane brings Bernard to Bermuda for the first time.
In 1978, Bernard finally embarks on a full time career as an international visual artist/portrait-painter. His clients and patrons have been and continue to be from governments, corporations, academia, sports, private individuals, museums such as Masterworks and the Bermuda National Gallery as well as the Royal Collections of St-James Palace in London and of Windsor Castle.
Since the 1990s, patrons commission complete thematic exhibitions of Bernard’s work. These paid for before even being painted artworks represent such subjects as Tuscany, Venice, Provence and the Côte d’Azur, Jerusalem and in 2005, Paris.
Bernard Poulin also sculpts and creates 3 dimensional murals such as those of the donor wall in the foyer of the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario, of the Solange Karsh Medical Research Center in Ottawa and the bronze and marble sculpture displayed in the main hall of the Children’s Aid Society of Ottawa.
From the 1980s, the painter collaborates in the creation of more than a dozen books on drawing techniques and creativity. A magazine article and a TV show are translated into Italian and Portuguese. Author of 12 books, they include his “The Complete Colored Pencil Book” (1992) which sold more than 75000 copies in the first edition alone. In 2010, he writes “Beyond Discouragement, Creativity” – an essay on the effects of the past century on creativity. (This book is presently in revision for republishing as an updated second edition. In 2013, “Please Daddy Hold My Hand”, is written as a comic book, and later as a children’s book of the same title (in 2014). In 2015, “On Life Death And Nude Painting”, a book promoting the art of thinking and the sharing of ideas, is published.
In 2011, Bernard is knighted as a Chevalier de l’Ordre de la Pléiade by the Parliamentary Assembly of French Nations. In 2019, he receives an honorary doctorate from Laurentian University of Sudbury and in the same year, the city of Ottawa confers upon Bernard the Order of Ottawa.
An illustrated biography by Benoit Cazabon, entitled “Bernard Aimé Poulin – a portrait”, is published in 2019. Thevisualartist’sbiographyisalsolistedinthe“CanadianWho’sWho”andin“ADictionaryof Canadian Artists”.