Another mural went up in Sturgeon Falls on Thursday, August 6, and it’s a little slice of West Nipissing life. On the north-facing wall of the PBL Insurance building at the corner of King and John streets is a painting comprised of two panels paying homage to the good life. The mural is titled La pêche sur le lac Caché (Fishing on Cache Lake).
The artists are Flore Dauphinais Côté, her sister Jocelyne Dauphinais Desbiens, and friend Gisèle St-Georges. The three artists are from the Verner arts community, and they’ve brought a bit of Verner into Sturgeon Falls.
Flore Côté said, “I came to Sturgeon to look at the wall and realized we needed a horizontal picture. I got home and within 10 minutes after I saw my husband he suggested ‘Oh, I see a fisherman on that side and a fish on that side’, and that was it! I spoke to Jocelyne and she agreed.”
Flore said they live on Cache Lake where they have a camp, so it was a natural to go out and take pictures and stitch an idea together for a representational piece of the surroundings they love.
The three artists are part of a painting club that regularly meets at the Club de l’Amitié in Verner every Wednesday from October to June. Of course this year with Covid, that all changed. Nevertheless, the club opened its doors to the three so they could prep their canvas and complete their painting. While this offering has been mounted in Sturgeon Falls, the artists have a notion to do a mural for Verner. “Yes, we would like that,” said Flore, while her sister Jocelyne added, “There’s a building in Verner that would be perfect for that, but we need to get permission.”
Collaborative works present a different kind of challenge, blending different skills and merging talents. On this painting, the three prepped the canvas, painted, coated with 4 layers of outdoor varnish and, with the assistance of others, had it mounted. Flore did the outline and all three painted together. Cache Lake is a largish lake, with a narrows leading into a smaller bay. On the left side of the painting are the rocks so natural to our pre-Cambrian shield, and on the rocks are two flags, the Canadian maple leaf and the Franco-Ontarian green fleur-de-lis..
