From The Arts: Nathalie Parenteau

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Heather has been writing for What’s Up Yukon since the early days of the pandemic. She enjoys sharing stories about Yukoners with a passion for what they do, whether it’s making artwork, producing a play or running a business. In her free time, there’s nothing she loves more than hitting the trails with her bike and her human and canine buddies.

THE ACCIDENTAL ARTIST

It was never Nathalie Parenteau’s intention to be an artist. Although she’s had a successful art practice for decades, she still views her vocation as something she stumbled upon.

“It was not the plan,” she said.

“You just fall into things. It still kind of feels like it’s a hobby. I still feel like, okay, I need to get serious.” And then she laughed.

Even though she said that making art for a living was not a conscious choice, Parenteau admitted that she’s always had an aptitude for the visual arts.

“It’s always been easy for me. So, since kindergarten, I’ve always been the teacher’s pet in craft class.

“It was a natural tendency that became more and more prominent. And now it’s a career, I guess.”

Originally from Montreal, Parenteau fi rst arrived in the Yukon 39 years ago as a volunteer in the youth organization Katimavik.

“I stayed, did the whole hippy thing, the bush hippy thing,” she said.

She also made art. Parenteau’s work is ubiquitous in the Yukon. She incorporates her engaging, stylized interpretations of the natural world into pieces ranging from charming Christmas cards, to large-scale murals.

Parenteau said that the cards were fi rst created on a whim, “just for fun, but now people ask, every year, if the new card is out.” The whimsical cards have

included Rudolph kayaking amidst ice fl oes, Santa ski-joring with a husky and the three wisemen riding musk ox under the aurora borealis. Parenteau’s work, no matter what the scale, typically includes animals of some kind.

“All the critters I paint—I feel like they’re my little babies.”

Like all parents, Parenteau fi nds it hard to let her “babies” go. Fortunately, she can always go visit them because many of these critters fi nd their way into large, dynamic murals installed in public spaces.

The earliest mural can be found in Carcross on the Community Centre. Created in 1987, the vibrant tableau features winter and summer scenes on Bennett Lake—people playing on the ice and snow, and fl ying kites on the beach. The swirling night skies, dotted with stars, are repeated in Parenteau’s subsequent work, although her landscapes become more stylized and symbolic and less identifi able as a specifi c place.

The latter is true of Parenteau’s most-recent mural, Rhythms of a Northern Town, which was installed on the exterior of the Ta-

khini Arena last fall. The huge painting, which measures 64 feet by 12 feet, represents Whitehorse, but we know that not because of a faithful depiction of the city but by the artist’s inclusion of white horses swimming in a river, and by the presence of a sternwheeler. Parenteau captures the essence of the “Wilderness City” with a few simple symbols.

L’Opéra des Calamités

PHOTO: PETER VON GAZA

PHOTO: COURTESY OF NATHALIE PARENTEAU Nathalie Parenteau working on Rhythms of a Northern Town. The paint was highly toxic, so she worked outside in a tent.

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