The heart of Acadie; Two contemporary artists express the impact of
the 1755 Expulsion
Elissa Barnard Arts Reporter
ONLY ONE of Denise Comeau's abstract paintings relates directly to the
Deportation of the Acadians from Grand Pr·; in 1755. Oudy, a painting in dark
blues with one raw edge of rusted metal, is a homage to an entire family of
Acadians, the Oudys, who died when their transport ship sank.
Comeau and Marcelle Belliveau, Acadian artists exhibiting together in Marks:
Visible traces at Wolfville's Harvest Gallery, are descended from Acadians who
did survive the Expulsion. (Both of their relatives hid from the English in the
woods and settled later on the rocky shores of Baie Sainte Marie.)
Yet the fact of the Expulsion haunts them still. "The Deportation happened 250
years ago but it's still very much in the psyche," says Comeau, who lives in the
Clare community of Comeauville. "What happened 250 years ago still affects us
very much today.
"It's what we do everyday here; you have to decide whether you're going to
make it a struggle every day as far as language or if you're going to let it go.
Everything you do has to be done in both languages and how far do you want
to push it? It's very difficult to explain, that's why I paint."
The artists' expression of Acadian culture and the dilemma of being an Acadian
in an English-speaking world is a long way from realistic paintings of Evangeline
getting on a boat.
Their artwork, while taking in Acadian symbols, particularly the colours of the
Acadian flag, is very much a rigorous contemporary art with an emotional edge.
The subject is identity.
Comeau, who runs her own gallery La Galerie Comeau in July and August, is
best known for the realistic watercolours she has painted for the last 20 years
reflecting the rural, coastal landscape and customs of Acadian life. At Wolfville's
Harvest Gallery, she exhibits large soulful abstracts, which she started painting
five years ago after taking a workshop with Annapolis Royal abstract
expressionist Wayne Boucher.
Comeau's highly textured acrylic abstracts with scratched surfaces, raised ribs
of paint and paper rectangles beneath the paint slowly reveal themselves in
meaning, emotional power and imagery. Comeau's colours are earthy, her
geometric shapes alternate with open spaces of richly worked colour.
You can see an architecture of window and doorway shapes or fields or parts of
a cross recalling the Deportation Cross in Grand Pr·;. The thick ribs of paint
sometimes recall human ribs or the ribs of a ship.
The abstracts are as much connected to Baie Sainte Marie as her watercolours,
says Comeau. "The watercolours are where I live, the abstracts are what I live.
"These paintings are more the emotional side which is not always easy. It's
very difficult to explain. It's what I live everyday rather than what I see every
day. It's very much the place I live, living in a minority language situation and
all that brings along with it."
Comeau grew up schooled in English and speaking French at home. "A lot of
Acadian people end up being strong in neither language. It's very much a
struggle a lot of Acadians have to deal with, especially in this part of Acadie."
(Other Acadian communities like those in Northern New Brunswick are more
unilingual.)
"Acadian history has been coming out since the Congrès Mondial Acadien
(in 2004). A lot of our history, a lot of it we never learned in school. Perhaps
our ancestors didn't want to talk about it," says Comeau, a former president
and member of the Conseil des Arts de la Baie for 20 years and a founding
member of La Manivelle printshop.
She learned about the Oudy family after the Congrès. "The entire Oudy
family, mother, father, 10 children, brothers, sisters-in-law, cousins, was wiped
out when their ship, The Violet, sank. "There are no Oudys in Acadie today."
Comeau did the painting when she found out about the tragic family. "There
was nobody even left behind to cry," she says. "It's really a homage to the
family."
While Comeau defines herself as a proud Acadian, Marcelle Belliveau calls
herself a "reluctant Acadian."
"Denise and I represent opposite sides of a reaction to being Acadian. She's
the type who stayed and has been very involved in the community and fighting
for the preservation of our culture.
"I'm the opposite. I felt I was living in an English world and I felt resentful I
was not prepared to participate in it.
"I knew I would go to university in English and knew I was ill equipped."
Belliveau taught in the environmental planning and communication design
departments of NSCAD for six years before returning to La Baie Sainte Marie
four years ago.
Belliveau, whose family name is Maillet, found she couldn't escape her history.
"I found trying to run away from being Acadian, it was impossible. It wasn't
hard to tell I had an accent, it wasn't something I could hide anywhere."
In her paintings of oil pastel on drafting film, Belliveau pulls sentence and
phrases from Longfellow's poem Evangeline and writes the snippets in large
expressive handwriting in either English or French. "I call it a reinterpretation of
the poem so it fits contemporary Acadie."
The American poet's work mythologized the Acadian Expulsion in the fictional
love story of Evangeline and Gabriel. For Belliveau the poem is "symbolic of us
as Acadians trying to situate ourselves in the broader culture."
The way Acadians react to the poem "is a big indication" of how they react to
being Acadian, she says. The large presence of the words reminds the viewer
how important language is in defining a culture and an individual. "Language
plays a key role," says Bellievau, "not only in my continuing struggles with
personal identity but also as an evolving reminder of broader cultural loss."
Belliveau's gestural line drawings are abstract. "If I see anything recognizable I
scrap it," she says.
"They are abstract but I'm trying to convey a certain sense of feeling. Some of
the lines are more aggressive. Some seem contemplative, while others seem
more emotional."
She used to work monochromatically, but these pictures have the bold red,
blue and yellow of the Acadian flag. Belliveau, who is president of the Conseil
des Arts de la Baie, has noticed she's introducing more colour. "They're getting
more emotional as I go. They seem to be getting a little more agitated. I don't
know why."
As an Acadian today "I'm coming around and the Congrès helped also to
spark some pride a bit and I'm seeing things in a brighter light in some ways,
not necessarily in regard to the future of the culture but at least to my
association with it."
Traces first opened in Moncton at Galerie 12. The artists were keen to have it in
Wolfville, which is only a few kilometres from the lush fields of Grand Pr·;
where the Acadians lived.
"It's very important to both of us. We started it in Moncton which is a very
large Acadian community. In Wolfville it'll be interesting to see. At the opening
there were a lot of very interesting conversations because of that.
"You think about it as an Acadian driving through Grand Pr·; and seeing the
Minas Basin it's very difficult to drive through there and not think about it."
She believes the descendants of the New England Planters, who settled Acadian
lands, must in some way be haunted by their history. "I can't believe the
people in that Valley don't in some way suffer . . . some sort of guilt. I don't
know, nobody's ever admitted to it.
"My sister and I were at the Grand Pr·; Church. The tour guide, a seventh
generation of the Planters, it was an unbelievable speech he made. It really
moved us. You could tell he wasn't saying it through rose-coloured glasses. It's
still in our history but it's in their history as well. It's not their fault, it's
something that carries from one generation to the next."
Source: Chronicle Herald, The (Halifax, NS), May 06, 2006, pF8