Meet Nicole Durocher: Painter

We had the good fortune of connecting with Nicole Durocher and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Nicole, is there a quote or affirmation that’s meaningful to you?
A few come to mind but I return to this one often: “By the side of the everlasting Why there is a Yes–a transitory Yes if you like, but a Yes.” E.M. Forster- A Room With A View We affirm life through action as well as thought, I return to this when I feel my faith is slipping a bit, faith in the process and in my ability to produce the work I want to produce with clarity and joy. When I’m caught in nets of doubt I think about this and it reminds me that I already know, my intuition is guiding the process.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
My art is figurative and blends the physical and the metaphysical in it’s tone. I’m interested in the line between dreams and waking life, between the material forms externally and the shifting immaterial forms I see internally. Colour is a huge focus for me; I did an internship at a textile studio and I was responsible for working with natural dyes and pigments. I found a book about Rudolf Steiner in the dye room and started to read about Goethe’s colour theory and Steiner’s expansion of that; as well as ayurvedic colour theory. I believe that colour has immense power to change our emotional state. I started drawing and painting in earnest after a car accident. I spent a lot of time in bed afterwards and I couldn’t walk for a while so I finally had to settle into myself a bit and focus. I was running a bit wild at that time and I think it was a destined thing; sometimes the forces take something small in return for something better, but we don’t see this until later. My trauma and resentment was reconfigured through art, I’m so grateful for this. It’s continuous, the struggle to remove barriers and distractions from work, but that was a defining moment, like the heavens saying, ‘Are you going to get on with it or what?’ Graduating from art school I floundered around for a while and this was a raw time. Not difficult exactly because I had the energy for the failed experiments, for working jobs I didn’t really align with in order to keep painting. It was a time of finding my footing but that’s a necessary step in the process- I think about Emily Carr (landscape painter from British Columbia) saying later in her life that when she first broke out of the Victorian watercolour tradition she had been trained in, she couldn’t give her pieces away let alone sell them. It’s important to make the work you are called to make, even if it takes you to some strange places and doesn’t immediately resonate with others. You see what you see, you have to show people for them to be able to understand and appreciate it. I believe that’s where technical skill through practice comes in, to refine vision.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
Well, Vancouver is a great city to visit. It has a bit of everything and the natural setting is impressive on it’s own so the fact that there are restaurants etc is just icing on the cake. First of course I would take them to the public market on Granville Island, honestly that place is a temple to me! Take the ferry across False Creek to Sunset Beach, admire the retro West End architecture and the trees in Stanley park. Lunch at Ramen Danbo- they have a vegan miso ramen with agedashi tofu that is unreal. I would also want to show them Van Dusen gardens, a great botanical garden I visited a lot as a kid. Thrift shopping on Main Street, art galleries along South Granville, cocktails at Liberty Distillery on Granville Island, full circle.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
My friends and family certainly. In specific, Karina Herrera, an artist I met in New York while I was studying at Parsons, encouraged me to try painting and gave me informal lessons in technique. I was standing at the door of painting and she pushed me through (gently) and gave me confidence. She’s very intuitive in her own work and part of the gift was the freedom to trust intuition which I saw in her and which was less developed in myself at that time. Her work is wonderful. Another person is a professor I had in a Tibetan Buddhism course, Lara Braitstein. I remember her standing at the lectern and saying ‘thoughts arise and we bear witness to them’. McGill had strict rules about proselytism so my professors in Religious Studies walked the line carefully but this wasn’t preaching it was just solid advice for living meditatively and I’ve considered it frequently since. It helps me to detach from the result and I think this ultimately is a gift when making art for a living.

Website: www.nicoleaimeedurocher.com
Instagram: @nicoleaimeedurocher

Image Credits
I took all the images.