Pam Comeau

About Pam

While being a single mother and working as a cleaning woman, I always kept working towards improving my skills as an artist. I studied drawing at Concordia, under Joseph Di Leo and painting at the Saidye Bronfman Center under Irena Korosec. Now my son is grown up and my drive as an artist has crystallized.

I am fascinated by the possible duality of life being both tremendously precious and also trivial. I aim to create art that has the same complexity of beauty with a slight reflection of humor, or darkness. I do this by painting with tender attention to detail, but by keeping the allegorical component of my art light hearted.

Rarely inspired by things I see, my paintings start with an image in my head. I then look around for props or models from which I take photos for reference. Once the painting has begun, I start to think about different titles, and when the right title hits I suddenly know what the painting is about.

In the series of hands, I use a very available body part to depict some of the stages one can go through during love. Body language is honest and our bodies are often quicker than our minds to express what the real situation is. In these paintings, the hands are laying clues.

In the series of fish: “A fish out of water”, “life in a fish bowl”. I think about these two common expressions, and find it interesting that we use fish to explain a human experience. Each painting has a fish that is, or fish that are, oddly placed. I wish to ask, “Are they out of water? Are they on display? What is it about their experience that we can relate to?”