Jean-Pierre Neveu was born in Saint-Basile-le-Grand, in the region of Mont\u00e9r\u00e9gie (Quebec, Canada), on April 12, 1948 to a modest family, in a time known as the “Great Darkness”. He begins painting at a very young age, before his first school years. At nine, he is already a passionate student in his drawing classes and stands out for his ability to reproduce elements with an exceptional fidelity. At the age of 14, Neveu\u2019s father encourages him to sell his paintings, and he quickly gains in popularity as a result.<\/p>\n\n
As a self-taught artist, Neveu never felt the need to validate what he would later practice as a profession. However, in 1968 he enrols at the \u00c9cole des M\u00e9tiers d\u2019Arts in Montreal. With Professor Ivanho\u00e9 Fortier Dupuis, he learns the techniques of stone carving. Always in an innate need to satiate his techniques and knowledge, to this day Jean-Pierre Neveu has never stopped studying various techniques in visual arts.<\/p>\n\n
In 1983, he composes an unusual chromatic chart on the natural colors of our real, terrestrial environment according to the perception of the human eye, which led him to create paintings based on a concept out of the ordinary for this time. In 1985, while teaching painting and drawing in different organizations, he opens his own school where he teaches the techniques of painting and stone carving, a school he names Studio Creativ-Art. In 1989, this school becomes the Association of Stone Sculptors of Mont\u00e9r\u00e9gie.<\/p>\n\n
1986 turns out to be a pivotal year for Neveu as the artist embarks on a passionate quest to reinvent the landscapes of this world to create a new one. It is through this inner search that the Universe of Ava is born. In 2012, Neveu publishes a 912-page novel titled \u201cLe Perceurs d\u2019Univers\u201d (The Piercer of Universes published by the Editions of Mi-Fiction) that describes the Universe of Ava in all its intricate details.<\/p>\n\n
On April 21, 2012 Neveu was inducted as a signatory member of the Institute of Figurative Arts (IAF). That same year, Neveu celebrates fifty years of artistic life by creating a major event where he presents a retrospective of his works through his artistic journey. For the first time, he exhibits his new collection of oil paintings with three-dimensional effects. In 2013 during the annual Academia Gala, the International Academy of Fine Arts of Quebec (AIBAQ) awards Neveu with the prize of “Master in Fine Arts.\u201d In 2014, after five years of research, Neveu discovers the missing link to make his work unique in the field: he creates a way for us to see his paintings in three dimensions by crafting a chromatic chart adapted for figurative painting. In May 2015, he is accepted as a member of the Society of Canadian Artists.<\/p>\n\n
2015 to 2018 are years of recognition for the Master of Fine Arts. Several honors and important distinctions are conferred on him, in Europe as well as in Canada. One of them stands out amongst others: the Silver Medal of the Academic Society ARTS-SCIENCES-LETTERS of Paris. He participates to hundreds of important exhibitions, such as the Museum Marc-Aur\u00e8le Fortin in 1993, where a work of 12 X 6.5 feet is presented. His artwork travels in France, the United States and Canada, but most of it is found in private and corporate collections, including Loto Quebec, SNC Lavalin and the Montreal Institute of Fine Arts. <\/p>\n\n
For some years now, he has given lectures on artistic subjects that highlight the power of the artist following his creative process. The goal is to further develop their dream world to realize their own artistic signature. In parallel to his conferences, Neveu is always in search of knowledge, which brings him to go deeper into his research and to experiment on new creative concepts, which he then shares with his peers, and help them push their creative limits.<\/p>\n\n
As a young child, Jean-Pierre Neveu is possessed by the unexplainable impulsive need to continually draw scenes from his environment: barns, houses, cows, trees. He naturally grasps the importance of observation and gesture, to memorize the elements he sees so that he can later represent them as accurately as possible with his colored pencils. This reveals the analytical personality of this artist, a personality that will always be fed by exploration, study, research and creation. <\/p>\n\n
He finds inspiration in Delacroix, Van Dyck, Michelangelo and Leonardo Da Vinci, some for their style and technique, others for their thirst for knowledge and artistic achievements.<\/p>\n\n
Neveu paints forest scenes in a natural way. Directly connected to nature, he favors hyperrealism which leads him to surrealism. He feels no need to sketch: on a black or white background, he spontaneously starts his first creative gesture. Four Golden Section points guide his initial composition. As described by art historian and critic Sam Aberg, Neveu manipulates small or large brushes in a surgical precision to define forms on the canvas, creating the scenes in a spatio-temporal style. The evolution of strokes and paint spots transforms into hundreds of points of interest, which then translates into a totally magical environment.<\/p>\n\n
Using pure oil as a medium of choice, Neveu carefully choses the colors of each scene, deposits them to create a detachment between each element, filling the depth of field of the different planes of the painting: the result is a visual in three dimensions. Neveu meticulously studies and develops this technique to adapt it to figurative painting. He creates his own chromatic chart in three dimensions with the help of ChromadepthTM glasses. This outcome demonstrates an undeniable fact: the creation of a new artistic movement, the \u201cChromadepth\u201d 3D, proclaimed by art theorist H\u00e9l\u00e8ne-Caroline Fournier-Torregrossa. <\/p>\n\n
Vibrant blues, warm yellowish greens or cold greens getting closer to aqua, deep reds fading into orange: all these colors unite in tickling their complementary colors. By this pictorial treatment, the colors enveloping the composition create in this way, a mystical atmosphere that only the artist can master. From the simple forest scene to the fantastical landscape stemming from a parallel world born from the artist, Jean-Pierre Neveu learns to write a fiction book in order to define the deep nature of his world. “My painting was not enough to fully express everything I saw and knew about this world. Shall I write to give it even more realism as to believe in it even more?”<\/p>\n\n
To believe more, so that the imaginary never ceases to create.<\/p>\n\n
The artist\u2019s work comes to life inseparably from its parallel world. Each painting, large or small, mainly illustrates plants classified by species, family, order, class and branch from the universe of Ava. Nothing is left to chance in the artist\u2019s mind. The scrolling of the scenes thus painted reproduces a completely reinvented visual.<\/p>\n\n
In front of each completed artwork, his pride is manifested in a vision that is always improved by his technique, to contribute to the fabulous world of art here and now, and later on, like a legacy of his memory. The work of the artist leads the viewer to wonder where the key is to be found, to penetrate this universe, unknown to us until now.<\/p>\n\n
WELCOME TO THE UNIVERSE OF AVA!
| 1962 to 1965<\/td> | DES, \u00c9cole secondaire G\u00e9rard-Filion, Longueuil, QC, CA<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\nProfessional training<\/h3>\n\n
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