Pierre Coupey: Shaping Canada’s Cultural Landscape Through Art and Language

Artist Statement
“Only the imagination is real.”
William Carlos Williams

“Three principles shape my practice and each emphasizes the open-ended process of making paintings and texts: development by transformation  (Stanley William Hayter, Atelier 17, Paris); form is never more than an extension of content (Robert Creeley in Charles Olson, “Projective Verse”); the medium is the message (Marshall McLuhan).

A close reading of contemporary poetry and poetics, and of Canadian, American, European and Asian art, also informs my practice as a painter and printmaker.

I work in serial runs of various lengths, clusters of work, each of which explores a particular nexus of emotional, conceptual, aesthetic and technical challenges. Sometimes the clusters break down into subsets of pairs, trios or quartets of paintings or prints, each subset exploring a tangent or angle suggested by the direction of the main group.

Sometimes I work in a diptych format or I’ll bisect a horizontal format with a vertical line to make a fictive diptych: both formats rime with the pages of an opened book. In addition, my preferred format in scale rimes with the standard 8 ½” x 11” letter page, which further proposes a rime between a painting and a manuscript. In one sense, each painting is a page from a manuscript, a book in progress. For me, painting and writing –– mark making –– are one activity, the basic work of the hand.

In the studio the search is for discovery through proprioception (sensibility within the organism by movement of its own tissue), that is, the intelligence of the body. In my practice it isn’t reason over passion, or passion over reason, but reason with passion. Not depiction of  “the real” but reenactment of the real through the proprioception of rimed experience, language, landscape and art. My interest is not in representation, but in presentation.”

pierre coupey, canadian artist, folioyvr, helen siwak, west coast luxury, vancouver, bc, yvr — Pierre Portrait 2024 | Photo by Rachel Topham

The Artist Behind Echo’s Bones

Pierre Coupey, raised and educated in Montreal, earned his BA from McGill University, studied art in Paris, and completed his MA in English and Creative Writing at UBC. He also holds a Certificate in Printmaking from  Capilano University. A founding co-editor of The Georgia Straight and founding editor of  The Capilano Review, he now serves on  The Capilano Review Contemporary Arts Society Board. Coupey has received numerous awards and grants, including support from the Canada Council, the BC Arts Council, and the Audain Foundation.

Pierre was honoured with the Distinguished Artist Award from FANS in 2013 and was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in 2017. His poetry, chapbooks, and catalogues have been widely published, and his visual art has been exhibited nationally and internationally.

His work is held in major public collections including the Vancouver Art Gallery, Canada Council Art Bank, Simon Fraser University, and the  West Vancouver Museum.

Author Profile

Helen Siwak, Luxury Lifestyle Observer: Helen Siwak is the founder of EcoLuxLuv Communications & Marketing Inc and publisher of Folio.YVR Luxury Lifestyle Magazine and PORTFOLIOY.YVR Business & Entrepreneurs Magazine. She is a prolific content creator, consultant, and marketing and media strategist within the ecoluxury lifestyle niche. Helen is the west coast correspondent to Canada’s top-read industry magazine Retail-Insider, holds a vast freelance portfolio, and consults with many of the world’s luxury heritage brands. Always seeking new opportunities and challenges, you can email her at [email protected].