Louis

An Astounding Visit

I walked into the Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art in Winter Park, Florida in February of 2006 and walked out astounded by what I had just experienced, committed to creating stained glass artwork of my own! The moment I stepped into the museum I was assaulted by the penetrating colours of the leaded panels, lamps and other glass works of L.C. Tiffany. I was stunned by the artistry. This event has been a providential guidance in my life.

Laboratory Art

In actual fact, for over 30 years I had been working with stained glass, although unconsciously. As a medical laboratory technologist, I had been making blood films on glass slides. I stained them with purple dyes to identify blood cells, malaria and bacteria illuminated in beautiful colours on my microscope . My scientific career was transforming into an artistic one.

I BELIEVE

I believe I have lost a language.

I want to speak the ART language I forgot.

I want to speak in GLASS. And I want light to shine through my words.

I hope one day I will not need to translate.

I want to add art-speak to science-says and discover what emerges. Leave rule keeping and statistical coercion.

I want to feel the colour.

I want to play in the sandbox.

What is yellow whispering in my ear? Is yellow really the colour of fear?

I want to write the biography of blue;
the glorious ceiling I live under, watching with awe the cloud-changes above.

I contemplate the pressure of green emoting spring.

I believe joy should be ordinary. And wonder mandatory.

Anticipating California poppy orange, I want to wake up to unseen purple faith.

I believe red can be the colour of tears, as I struggle to be here.

I believe black is the colour of determination through the night time.

Roll in the wintery crystal that magnifies the Light!

And wonder at the Wonder.

LIKE THE CHILDREN WE ONCE WERE

In everything I do I am looking for the motivation to keep on living….
I believe that we are supposed to live life wide awake with inquisitiveness, anticipation and enthusiasm like the children we once were.
I find this motivation each day when I give myself the time to experience awe
In the magnificence of Nature:
The vistas of the sky…
The panoramas of the landscape…
The miniature worlds underneath my microscope…
I find it when I remember what I did naturally as a child with no prodding or persuasions and when I allow myself to be as curious as my child self would have me be.

The Magical Ingredient

I am entranced by the colours and textures of glass, frequently transported into states of child-like awe and wonder when I am designing with it. It is my purpose to somehow transmit these same feelings to others, not only to enjoy them for myself. I often contemplate how dead these artworks are without the passage of light through them. There is no colour! Light is the secret ingredient bringing life to the glass. I am indebted therefore to the Author of light, for I cannot be a glass artist without it.

chalk pastel drawing?

In the last couple of years my life situation has changed. I have been taking care of family members with dementia in Ontario. Away from my glass studio, I have discovered chalk pastel drawing which has afforded me a new artistic outlet which complements the stained glass art I normally do.

Louis Gignac