I ask you: who is Luc Martineau? Artist or Man of the Law?
There are days when I do not really know who I am anymore. Do we define ourselves by our actions, our education, our family, our profession, our beliefs, our passions, or all of these at once? I surely lack an academic background in visual arts. I am, first and foremost, a jurist who had a career as a lawyer, mediator and arbitrator before becoming a federal judge. Today, by identifying as an artist, I am taking a leap of faith. What a “beau risque”!
“J’aurais voulu être un artiste pour pouvoir dire pourquoi j’existe”: it’s the “Blues du businessman” in Starmania. We know the song and the sad lament of the singer…
That is true, but in my case, “non, je ne regrette rien,” to quote the lyrics of another famous French song. In fact, the legal profession opened my mind to the social inequalities and the existential dimension of the law: I didn’t need to be an artist to be able to tell why I exist. Justice is an ideal that I understood at a young age, as painting, like love, became a PLUS in my life…
Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuit order, is reported to have once said: “Give me a child until he is seven, and I will show you the man.”
Maybe, we’ll have to see… I am still a baby boomer! Anyway, the Quebec of the fifties has much changed since. Dad was an accountant, and Mom stayed home after the birth of little Luc and the couple’s three other children. My parents wanted the best for their children and believed in the value of a classical and university education. My grandfather whom I never knew was a lawyer, as well as the eldest of daddy’s family. We often joked that there were three paths to success: law, administration and medicine! I chose the first at a young age.
Your prospective career was all mapped out!
In a way, you could say that. At ten, I already saw myself as a future Perry Mason: like the vigilante of the small screen, I would defend the innocent, unjustly accused of the most heinous crimes. Yet, I will never know the courts of assizes. Nevertheless, the human dimension will always prevail, and a significant portion of my career as a lawyer will be devoted to labour law, which will become, at least to me, justice in action!
Let’s get back to the point: can an artist’s seed ever find fertile ground in a family of lawyers?
I think so. As a child, I used to write short poems to express my inner self. I drew a lot, I even created comic strips. And, if Tintin was my hero, I admired above all the magnificent images of Hergé, which made me dream so much! However, I had no idea that painting would later become a passion and would allow me to find balance, on the tightrope of the law! However, I could have detected some warning signs. If the law was in my DNA, the arts were also part of my family’s genetic baggage: you just have to consider the feminine side!
You refer to your mother?
Yes, it was my mom who introduced me to French literature, opera and the seventh art. First through Victor Hugo, the poet, novelist and politician. Ha! If only one day his eldest son… She encouraged me to write verses and recite my poems before family and friends. She was my first fan! Then, there was opera, her true passion, although she could not turn it into a career. Possessing a beautiful coloratura soprano voice, mom had taken classical singing lessons. Opera was human drama brought to life through the talent of the librettist, composer and performers. She also loved French cinema, Jean Cocteau, Marcel Carné, and so on, and it was their films, lacking colour yet full of poetry, that would feed my imagination for years!
You could feel her aspirations and repressed desires?
That’s for sure, but her fears too! Mom had not learned Italian. Fortunately, this allowed me to better appreciate her lyrical musings. “On m’appelle Mimi,” from Puccini’s verismo opera “La Bohème,” was her great aria, as if to remind us children of how precarious the lives of poet and painter are… And I’m not referring to the poor Modigliani that mom introduced me to as Gérard Philippe in Jacques Becker’s “Montparnasse 19.” Besides, when I first travelled to Europe, solo at age 19, it is in the Montparnasse district that I ended up and in the neighbouring Jardin du Luxembourg, one beautiful Sunday morning, that I recited poems for the onlookers, with a young girl who accompanied me with her guitar!
It was your phase as a bohemian, but it did not last long… You chose the law!
It’s true. As a teenager, I did think of becoming a writer or filmmaker. I had written a short novel and some poems that were never published. I had produced short amateur films. I had won a prize in photography. I had organised poetry nights. I had even put on a modern dance show. In short, I was racing in all artistic directions, yet not ready to jump into the unknown. In 1974, I enrolled at the University of Ottawa to study civil law. I was admitted to the Quebec Bar in 1978, the same year I lost my Martineau grandmother. This was significant because she meant so much to me. Fortunately, something precious would subsist of her artistic legacy!
END OF PART ONE – CONTINUATION IN MY NEXT TICKET!
