Pascal BIET – Sketches and notebooks to capture the spirit of the moment

As a child, he already knew his vocation: he wanted to draw. A loner, he explored the world of his native French countryside through drawing. This gift, recognized by his parents, he cultivated and nurtured, and would use it throughout his life. He began by studying drawing at elementary school, then went on to study fine arts in highschool. He then spent three years studying visual communication at ETIC, a specialized college, which provided him with the foundations for the profession he has practiced ever since, that of illustrator.

His first work was on children’s books, followed by a series of illustrations in a variety of fields. In just a few years, he produced over 2,000 images published in some thirty titles. After arriving in Québec in 2004, he joined Éditions Ulysse and began experimenting with graphic design for travel guides, recipe books and coffee-table books. He also collaborates with Éditions de la Chenelière, where he prepares layouts for several school textbooks, focusing on all aspects of graphic presentation.

A reserved man of few words, Pascal Biet speaks through his images. Since his youth, he has filled notebooks, which he carries with him everywhere, along with a compact set of tools: pencils, felt-tips, watercolors. His collection numbers some sixty notebooks, carefully numbered and arranged on a shelf in his office. Each one recounts a moment in his life: a journey, an experience, an encounter, a walk.

Through evocative drawings, often in color but also in black and white, he captures the essence of a moment, a scene that catches his eye, a landscape he discovers. In the margins, he writes details about the weather, the mood of the day, the date.

He draws quickly, and the gesture of sitting down somewhere, opening his notebook and catching the zeitgeist has become a kind of second nature. Architecture – houses, churches, structures and buildings – often inspires him, but so do public markets, bridges, public squares in the heart of villages. And animals. The pages of his notebooks are filled with drawings of his cats and dogs.

During the Dessine-moi une histoire (Draw me a story) workshops offered by Arts-Cultures Massawippi at the North Hatley public market, this internationally-renowned cartoonist and illustrator gets the children together to imagine a story that he draws as he goes along, page by page, getting them to discuss and reach consensus among themselves, naming the characters and inventing a thousand funny adventures for them.

Pascal Biet has also faithfully reproduced a few selected pages here and there, so as not to tear them out of his notebooks, which he insists on keeping intact. These works, now framed, give the viewer a glimpse into a world that remains secret, shared only with close friends and family: the world of a keen-eyed, skilfully-drawn balladeer who keeps precious records of the passage of time.