Local artist driven by new passion: painting the landscapes of Sandy Hi

Katya Feder & Paul McKeague

Brent Charbonneau can’t remember when he realized he was an artist. “I think I’ve been an artist my whole life,” says the longtime Sandy Hill resident, who grew up with his two brothers on a small farm in the Calabogie area of the Ottawa Valley. “Art has always fed and sustained me.”
At the age of five, he remembers drawing pictures of his toys. Soon he was going to Arnprior for evening art classes, and when he finished high school, he was off to Sheridan College in Toronto to do a three-year diploma program in interpretive illustration, graduating in 1994.
In the years that followed Brent met his wife Wendy and in 1999 settled down with her in Sandy Hill, where their daughter Logan was born four years later. Logan, too, has an artistic bent and is now studying photography at Concordia University in Montreal.
Brent has worked in web design, taught art and helped young art school applicants with their portfolios, while continuing to follow his own muse. In 2011, his passion took him to Easter Island with his father to begin work on 16 oil paintings of the island’s magnificent Moai statues, whose mysterious origins date back more than 500 years.
Long inspired by the art of Indigenous peoples, Brent was honoured several years ago to be awarded a commission to sculpt a large thunderbird out of basswood for the entrance of a former residential school that is now part of Algoma University in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. He is thrilled by the memory of the sculpture’s installation in the summer of 2017 as part of a cross-cultural project of residential school survivors, their children and the university.
Last year, Brent’s artistic journey landed him in the Château de Bouthonvilliers in Dangeau, near France’s Loire Valley, where he had been selected to be an artist in residence. He had never visited France before and threw himself into painting the scenes he found around him.
Upon returning home, Brent’s attention turned to the familiar—the kind of sights that greet him as he walks his dog, a Shih Tzu named Peanut. He began to focus on “the rich local landscape here in Sandy Hill,” he says. Drawn to scenes in which the natural and urban worlds meet, he is driven to capture the play of light on local landmarks, such as the Cummings Bridge and railway bridges across the Rideau River, at different times of day and in different seasons.
This new work will be featured in an exhibition that Brent is planning to hold later this year. The details haven’t been settled yet, but for now, his Sandy Hill paintings and other work can be viewed on his website: www.tribestudio.ca and on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/artxbent/.