Lecor, Paul 'Tex'

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Paul 'Tex' Lecor, a great Quebec figurative painter

Songwriter, singer, comedian, bush pilot (for 19 years), host and painter, Paul 'Tex' Lecor, IAF (Institut des arts Figuratifs) was born in Saint-Michel de Wentworth, Lachute in 1933 (died in 2017). His landscapes, group scenes and portraits offer the colorful vision of a painter with a fertile image. The sculptural character of his landscapes, group scenes or figures is underlined by the strength of the drawing and the luminosity that inhabits it. Tex focuses more than ever on the brilliance of the color, the beauty of the material and the movement that gives life to the painting. A virtuoso of color, skilled draftsman and keen observer, Tex continues to perfect his vision of things and to bring to life all the images that furnish his imagination. His bold palette, his incomparable and unclassifiable style, his verve and his humor make him one of the most known and recognized figurative painters in Canada.

An authentic painter with a bold palette

"Paul 'Tex' Lecor is made of a single block, as they say around here. An extraordinary communicator, and that's an understatement, he knows how to tell "his" stories with incredible verve. He is like his painting, or rather his painting is in his image. A highly talented draftsman, he uses the quality of his line to highlight a detail, a fact, with a touch of exaggeration, a hint of caricature. But if he amplifies certain turns of phrase, it's so that we can hear him better... At one point, we don't really know where the truth is hiding. Then we realize that everything is true, everything! It's just a little exaggerated.

His painting is inspired by the memory of his childhood, but also by our popular imagery, by his fishing stories, by the time he was a bush pilot or by this Madame Chose whom he knew well at the time, when he went to paint in nature in the end of... His painting is him, I tell you! » Robert Bernier.

Quebec painter Paul 'Tex' Lecor is firmly present in several major art galleries across Canada and his works can be found in important collections (Musée National des Beaux-Arts de Québec, Museum of Modern Art in New York, etc.).

ADDITIONAL ARTICLE(S):

Paul “Tex” Lecor (1935-2017)

Paul Lecor, better known as "Tex," owes much of his fame to the world of entertainment. His songs and his participation in radio shows, including the famous "Insolences d'un téléphone," contribute greatly to this popularity. But the singer-host-comedian is also known as a painter. A standard-bearer and defender of an artistic expression based on the landscape tradition, he appears, in the world of traditional figurative painting, as one of the most significant artists.

Paul Lecor began painting long before performing on stage. He studied at the École des Beaux-Arts de Montréal for eight years. The education he received there, as well as a close friendship with the painter Léo Ayotte, would have a decisive influence on his artistic development. Marc-Aurèle Fortin, Clarence Gagnon, and the painters of the Group of Seven are among the artists he deeply admires. He is a worthy successor, possessing immense talent.

The artist's vision is, if not folkloric, at least strongly imbued with nostalgia for a bygone era: those times when landscape painting underwent great upheavals, evacuating a romantic vision of the European style in favor of an approach closer to the harsh reality that is ours and marked by the seal of modernity. This characteristic trait is particularly notable in the artists of the Group of Seven, and notably in the painting of Warren Harris. For these reasons, Lecor's painting cannot today be described as avant-garde or simply new. His plastic approach is based more on anecdote, on chronicle, than on a play of materials questioning the meaning of the representation of painting.

Over the years, Tex Lecor has remained an unwavering defender of nature. His excursions with Indigenous peoples in the North and the Far North have often inspired his paintings. The artist undoubtedly intended his paintings to bear witness to the last vestiges of a nature more threatened than ever on all sides. A great traveler to distant lands, he reveals himself, somewhat like the literary hero Jack London, to be a privileged witness to our vast wildernesses.

Source: Robert Bernier, Painting in Quebec since the 1960s, Les Éditions de l'Homme, 2002, Lecor Paul “Tex” Lecor (1935), pages 309-310.

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