Among the artists in Studio Georgeville’s Christmas show is Sawyerville watercolourist Denis Palmer.
Ask Palmer his artistic goal, and he will tell you that it is to “tell significant local stories”—stories not just of Eastern Townships life, but of any place where the small but important things are being lost by modern society.
His paintings and sketches, most of which are executed in situ, capture the dynamics and essence of these acts and scenes—a sheepshearer at work, people at a chicken-pie dinner, a warm and ample farmhouse kitchen, wood drying in the oven, a country fair or auction, a pan of maple syrup boiling down in the sugar house.
Palmer might sit for hours, watching and listening, waiting for the right moment to catch what it is he’s searching for. He feels strongly about the inter-relatedness of environment and culture, and wants to capture fragile traditions that soon may become extinct with the incursion of large-scale farming and the infringement of civilization.
Most of his work begins with quick sketches that grow in detail as he draws. The finished product may contain more lines than colour—only part of a barn wall may be given colour to indicate rather than explain. This approach creates art that is intensely alive—particularly his people in action—somewhat the way blurred photographs can capture movement.
Palmer has been part of the Townships scene for thirty years. He has immersed himself in it, helping to harvest maple syrup, going again and again to country fairs, sitting in someone’s kitchen for hours, listening to them talk. After several years of hearing people’s stories, he started writing some of them down, and over the years he amassed a collection of tales to complement his paintings. Last year he compiled his pictures and stories into a book, Heritage, a delightful bilingual volume that captures Townships life in a way you won’t find anywhere else.
Palmer, a Montrealer by birth, earned a degree in architecture from McGill. But towards the end of his studies, he started travelling, carrying his sketch book with him. Over time he began to realize that immersing himself in life around him and capturing its essence was what he most loved to do, and what he was very good at. Since then he has been all over Europe, out to the west coast of North America—stopping to work at ranches in Alberta—and down to Mexico and Guatemala. Wherever he has gone, he has brought his sketch book and headed out to work early every morning.
He has always loved the Eastern Townships, especially the more remote parts of this area. In 1979 he rented a house in Sawyerville, where he met and married his wife, Judy, built a house, and settled in. Now it’s as if he had been born here, except that he brings a fresh, appreciative eye to what might seem humdrum daily life to those whose families have been farming, logging and sugaring here for generations.
Palmer has also been teaching drawing and watercolour for a number of years. This past summer and fall, he gave three workshops at Studio Georgeville. His main objective in teaching is to instill confidence, to teach his students how to go about acquiring the skills to create their own art. “It’s mostly about having the discipline to practise,” Palmer says. “People aren’t going to become skilled by taking my workshops.”
Currently, Palmer is working on a major project. His canvas consists of two blank walls in the new Cookshire IGA that he will be filling with art that expresses his strong views about the need to retain traditional methods of cultivation and consumption. He will be using acrylics for this, so he will be developing his knowledge of a technique that is new to him.
When asked what he thinks the creative process does for a person, Palmer replies, “I think it allows the person to become who they were meant to be.” Denis Palmer strikes me as a man who is fully the person he was meant to be.