I am pleased to present Echoes of Light and Shadow, a fifteen-minute video created during the winter of 2024–2025 with my longtime friend and artistic accomplice, Richard Tardif. Filmed in my studio in the Saint-Henri district of Montreal, this piece invites you into my creative world — a space inhabited by memory, light, pigments, and inner visions.
The video came to life following an invitation from Maia Sylba, editor of the international magazine Musetouch Visual Arts Magazine. Over the past few years, Maia and I have shared a fertile dialogue between visual art, poetry, dance, and dreams. At first, I had envisioned a simple montage of images and quotations. But the project quickly took on a life of its own. It became a necessity. I dreamed of something more personal, an introspective work in which I would lay myself bare — despite my hesitations about hearing my own voice or seeing myself on screen.
I wrote a script, selected music aligned with my vision, and spent days and nights working with Richard. He has known me since my time at the Federal Court of Canada. Even then, art lived within me — a quiet current flowing beneath the surface of the law.
The choice to speak in English may seem surprising. French is my mother tongue, but English came naturally. I spent many years in Ottawa writing judgments in that language. But the reason runs deeper. My father was Anglophone, my mother Francophone. At home, we mostly spoke French — except when my father had something serious or secret to say to my mother. Then, he would switch to English. I grew to associate that language with a certain emotional distance, a discreet way of expressing what was too raw to say otherwise.
Later in life, I discovered the beauty of English poetry. I began to write — and even to dream — in English. Some emotions can only find their voice in that other language. As if two sensitivities lived within me, two solitudes, two inner narratives.
I also wanted to give Maia a voice in this video. Of Slavic origin, she too expresses herself in English, which is not her mother tongue. Between our two voices emerged a resonance, an echo, a symmetry — a quiet kinship born from the meeting of our differences.
For we are made of both light and shadow. Behind the mask of the performer lives a fragile being, pierced by doubt. To speak from the heart is to risk the unspeakable. To tear a cry from silence — or at least a breath — the breath of an ancient voice not yet extinguished.
I intend to create another video soon, this time in French, which will explore other facets of my work, especially the Family Constellations series. Until then, I invite you to watch Echoes of Light and Shadow here:
To create is a form of alchemy: daring to turn the grey of reality into colour — and silence… into poetry.
Luc Martineau
