Richard Montpetit 

Richard Montpetit is a Québec painter who, in the late 1970s, developed an impressionist style – first through landscape, then gradually expanding his subjects during several painting trips abroad (Mexico, France, Italy, Portugal, Morocco, and the Dominican Republic). During this period, he adopted small formats and sketch‑like studies in which subtle colour harmonies and precise light effects capture the essential.

The street increasingly became his preferred subject. His compositions reflect a contemporary, urban reality. Constantly preoccupied with light – its variations across seasons, by day and by night, he captures the glow of headlights, streetlamps, illuminated storefronts, and neon signs. These observations immerse us in the exact atmosphere of the moment.

His work becomes a wandering through the streets of Montréal, where we follow anonymous figures, enigmatic silhouettes moving silently through the seasons. He later returned to paint in France, Cuba, Croatia, Malta, Martinique, then in Provence in 2016, Venice in 2018, and his most recent trip to Paris in 2025.

Across this varied body of work, whether landscapes or urban scenes, in Montréal or abroad-his art, grounded in the study of light, speaks to us of daily life, solitude, presence, and the passage of time.

“In the end, I am a traveller. Wherever I am, I look with a certain nostalgia, as if I were looking at old photographs, then everything becomes clear, and I truly see. Of course, I paint light, but studying light is watching time pass through days and nights, through the seasons. In a way, my subject is time: the time that passes in our lives, the time I try to capture, or at least remember when the magic was present, and express that I was there.

In recent years, my search for light has led me to choose the moment first dawn, for example. My daily walks in the surrounding countryside reveal paintings everywhere. Whether it is the beauty of the scene, my state of mind, or simply sharper observation, the fact is that I never stop seeing compositions in infinite variations.”

Since 1979, Richard Montpetit has presented more than thirty (37) solo exhibitions, including a retrospective at the Marc‑Aurèle Fortin Museum in 1987. Represented permanently by galleries across Canada, his works are part of numerous public and private collections.