Although internationally renowned as a master of oil paint, watercolour remains a key facet of the work of Jean-Paul Riopelle. It played an important role in the development of his overall approach, with his small format watercolours produced alongside Paul-Emile Borduas being some of his earliest explorations of a non-rational, automatic, and abstract style of painting. In this particular example from his Bridghampton series, vibrant colours are set off by inky blacks which contrast with the brilliant white of the paper. The choices at play in its composition, however, are also essential, and speak to Riopelle’s lifelong resistance to categorisation. Some of his most universally renowned works are in a “field” or “all over” approach, which diverges from a “figure/ground” approach in that it flattens the image, eliminating all illusion of depth. Works such as this one, however, confront those preconceptions, retaining suggestions of figures within space even as it works to break down those distinctions. These fresh, expressive, and challenging experiments demonstrate Riopelle as an artist never bound by theory or convention, but only by his most urgent artistic needs.

This work will be included as an addendum in Yseult Riopelle’s online catalogue raisonné on the artist’s work at http://www.riopelle.ca