Richard Paquette

Biography
A painter and sculptor for over forty-five years, the artist has lived in Mont-Saint-Hilaire since June 2014. He has participated in several group exhibitions and a duo show with painter Sylvia Audet in 2016. He was invited as a professional artist to the "Fleur de Macadam" event in 2011 in Aylmer, Quebec, La nature en héritage at the Musée des beaux-arts de Mont-Saint-Hilaire in 2017 and to celebrate the museum's twenty-five years in 2020.
Artistic approach
The artist continues his research into landscapes. In recent years, he has moved from a more figurative approach to one that focuses on the environment, which is gradually being destroyed by man's ever-increasing greed.
In "Mont-Saint-Hilaire l'an 2152", greed is the big winner. The mountain is nothing but a memory. A megalopolis has sprung up over the years. Trees have given way to concrete. The word bucolic is dying out.
The environment depicted in this picture is thirsty and dying. Water, once thought an inexhaustible resource, is evaporating, acidifying and destroying. Simulacra of cities are rebuilt from collapses.
The sun bakes the megalopolis with its fiery rays, piercing through this concrete flesh. It dies in March 2152.
Engraved on scattered blocks are a few fragmentary lines from a poem of centuries past;
"The child flees the strangeness of nature,
The child secures himself in artifice, in perfect autochthony
The child gives thanks to technology,
Children don't see the world as nomads,
The child views the world as a tourist,
The child merely strolls through humanity's department store."

**Automatically translated from the original text.**