When Madeleine Gérôme took me for the first time, around 1985, to Monique Renaud’s, her colleague from Radio-Canada, she explained to me her husband is a painter. Another one, I thought! And I saw myself already subject to the full review of the production of paintings by the artist.
It is he who opens the door for us – in a cooking apron. Monique hardly cooked, but he did, wonderfully … From that first meeting, I remember firstly that meal with subtle flavors, varied colorful dishes, and frankly: that lasted four hours. I had still not seen a corner of a painting. Monique then went to the piano, and then I heard one of the finest bass voices that I had heard in my life. Mussorgsky, and Schubert. I can still hear them in my head. But was he really a painter, as I was informed? In any case he had been trained in a singing academy and I learned later that he had long hesitated between vocalization and brush.
It was only after this little recital that I dared to ask, out of as much politeness as curiosity, if we could see some paintings … We went down to the basement, and we were dazzled – the never before seen, well … It was as if I could still hear his voice in each color, in each modulation between forms, in the depths of its surfaces. His paintings, in short, were like echoes of his voice. In a few minutes, my own “world view” was amended. I was in the presence not only of a great artist but in the heart of a singing matter.
Michel remained secret; spoke little – as if he had said everything in the organization that he imagined was his pictorial matter. Our friendship lasted almost twenty years through my contemplation of his work and the appreciation of his cooking … He was as humble an artist as he was genuine. I had the opportunity some time after that to introduce him to Dominic Dube; they both took to a brotherhood that I am proud to have been at the source of. It is to this absolute friendship that we owe the conservation and dissemination of a work that has been called to grow by itself to reach those to whom it was intended.
Then one fine day in May 2011, like “oak being felled for the pyres of Hercules” (according to Hugo’s verse that Malraux cited at de Gaulle’s death), this giant (physically as well as mentally) succumbed to the terrible fight that was his life. He returned to the lovely material he loved so much and where he was, through his visions as a painter, a bright prophet. Probably even beyond that return to the elements, he lives in the spirit that presides in this primordial matter. How would we be afflicted? For now the friend sees, hears and tastes the essential serenity of everything. What he knows is not in our power. It is for us to invoke at this time so that, through this work of mystery from which he has gratified us, he teaches us to aspire to this pacification of the heart where we necessarily go someday to find him.
– Jean Marcel 2016, from Thailand
professor, essayist, novelist , literary critic and poet from Quebec.
Close friend of Michel Morin and Monique Renaud