In "Restless and Confident Lines: The dialogue of gesture", Martin Brouillette presents a new body of work where drawing and painting collide in a nuanced dialogue of tension, contrast, and emotional resonance. These works mark an evolution in the artist’s practice — introducing hand-drawn pencil lines into compositions long defined by bold, colorful abstraction. Here, the pencil plays a different role. Its marks feel immediate, exposed, and emotionally raw — vulnerable in their restlessness, as if capturing a thought or hesitation in real time. In contrast, the painted gestures assert themselves with movement, vitality, and clarity. The result is a layered visual field where quiet introspection meets expressive confidence. Rather than one mode overtaking the other, Brouillette allows both to
coexist, to interact — even to conflict. Each painting becomes a space of negotiation: between intuition and control, subtlety and assertion, fragility and exuberance. This duality mirrors the artist’s own process, which remains grounded in experimentation, instinct, and emotional openness.
Through this series, Brouillette invites us to consider how opposing forces — doubt and joy, precision and abandon — can build a unified and deeply human visual languages. Restless and Confident Lines is not about choosing one path over another; it is about allowing both to be present, visible, and essential to the whole.
