Celebrated BC artist Pierre Coupey, founding editor of The Capilano Review and co-founder of The Georgia Straight, brings his latest groundbreaking exhibition Cutting Out the Tongue – Selected Work 1976 – 2012 to the Art Gallery at Evergreen, from March 16 to April 27, 2013.

Coupey, raised in Montreal, studied at McGill University, Paris’ Atelier 17, UBC and the Art Institute at Capilano University. He has been a practicing writer, printmaker and painter since the early 1960s. In the mid-1970s, he made a pivotal decision to focus his energies primarily on visual art, that is, on the “wordless” and “mute” activity of painting.

Although the influence and importance of literature in Coupey’s life and work cannot be denied, this exhibition looks at Coupey’s trajectory as a painter over the last four decades, on the contradictions and tensions deeply embedded in his abstract canvases, and his decision to metaphorically obey Matisse’s impossible admonition to “cut out the tongue” and paint.  From Evergreen Cultural Centre website

Students had the opportunity to work in the studio and explore the exhibit in the gallery.  We started in the studio with a canvas and two primary colours.  We covered the canvas usually different textures and brush strokes.  As the canvas dried to ventured upstairs to explore the colour, texture, and text in Pierre Coupey’s works.  We explored the influence poetry and lyrics had on painting.  We also wrote poems after looking at one of Pierre Coupey’s paintings.   We returned back to the studio to tape off the canvas and to layer more paint.