Claude Bolduc’s first art memory is seeing a program about Van Gogh on a Black and White television when he was around 5 years old. This inspired him to draw. And then draw more and more. He drew a lot. His father compared his drawings to those of a local rural Quebecoise painter - Arthur Villeneuve, 1910 -1990.

This was not a compliment. Villeneuve, a self-taught and prolific artist, was considered an eccentric outsider who was scorned in rural Quebec. But Claude, the child,   was proud to be compared to an adult artist and - to his parents’ dismay - was encouraged by the association. It would take 25 years for the two men to meet when Bolduc’s work as a postman would bring him, literally, to Villeneuve’s door in a small art-filled house in Chicoutimi in rural Quebec.

The chance encounter led to an epiphany for Bolduc who decided to dedicate his life to art. He wanted to spend time with Villeneuve and learn from him. Magic happened when Bolduc was invited in to see the house and the two could about art. It was a rare privilege says Claude, to see in person the surreal frescoes on painted walls, every flat surface and hallways.

Villeneuve believed that he was the reincarnation of the artist Henri Rousseau. For Bolduc he was a liberating idol and the catalyst for pursuing a life in art from then on. It was 1987, he was 32 years old and art was to become a compulsion. "From 1987 - 1990, I painted until exhaustion. It was liberating for me. I did not care about the derogatory or ridiculing comments I received from those around me. I just locked myself in a room and devoted all my free time to painting.”

Untrained yet compelled, Claude describes his work as “art singulier’, a French term describing self-taught artists who are outside the fine art system by choice or circumstance. His early work was in a naive style depicting his personal memories or social issues. This was followed by works exploring “the invisible” inspired by his own interpretation of the world and its parallel universes inhabited by strange and sensual creatures in a dream-like world. A deeply spiritual person, who believes in the basic teachings of the bible and the power of good versus evil. His challenge is to recover the mystery of creation. 

Bolduc’s works are in numerous international private collections. Museum collections include Musee de L’art Singular, Canada and Visionary Art Collection, Melbourne, Australia.