Jean Claude Roy
Jean Claude Roy was born in Rochefort-sur-Mer on the west coast of France in 1948. He knew from the age of seven that he would be an artist, and he was encouraged to do so by his grandfather, a farmer of modest means, who bought paintings at auctions. At the age of sixteen, Jean Claude attended merchant-marine training and took his first job as an apprentice electrician on a cable-repair boat. Several years at sea followed, with much time spent in the port of St John’s, Newfoundland, where his artistic focus turned to landscape. In 1971 he immigrated to Newfoundland, and for the next ten years he worked as a marine electrician by day and as an artist by night.
Jean Claude attended only two art classes and is essentially self-taught. By 1973 he was selling in local galleries, and he had his first solo exhibition in 1974. Two exhibitions at the provincial art gallery followed, as did representation in galleries in other parts of Canada. In 1982 he returned to France to establish himself as an artist in his own country, while rebuilding the stone farmhouse in which he had grown up and cultivating his orchard. He maintained his ties with Newfoundland, however, and since 1994 he has divided his time between the two countries.
He describes his style as “expressionist—colourist,” working most frequently in oils with a palette knife. Since the late 1980’s, a characteristic of his landscapes has been the presence of the sun: After staring at the sun, a black spot in front of his eyes was transformed into the sun on his canvas. He found that this added light to the landscape below, and it has now become an important feature of the composition of each work.
Jean Claude is one of the rare artists who paints almost exclusively on site. Because he paints every day, he sometimes finds himself faced with rain, wind, or snow. For him, a painting is a page in his diary, as each painting reflects not only the atmosphere of the place but also the people he meets along the way.
Between 2004 and 2010, he and his wife, Christina Benedict, developed and designed the French Shore Tapestry, a 220-foot-long work of art and craft embroidered by women from the community of Conche in northern Newfoundland.
In 2011, Breakwater Books published Fluctuat Nec Mergitur, a 480-page book that was the culmination of forty-five years of painting on the island of Newfoundland, including a painting of every community on the island. He and bookbinder Brian Roberts designed and created a special edition that embedded a unique original oil painting into the cover of each copy. In 2017, Breakwater Books published the companion volume, Terra Magna, with paintings from his extensive travels in Labrador over the prior ten years.
Jean Claude has been the subject of four documentaries: Sun in my Eyes (Springwater Productions, 2001), Phantoms of the French Shore (Barbara Doran and Jerry McIntosh Productions, 2012), Tour les Jours (Nicholas Mullins Productions, 2019), and Terra Magna (Nicholas Mullins Productions, 2024).
He has been a member of La Maison des Artistes, the French association of professional artists, since 1988. Considered one of the major interpreters of the Newfoundland landscape, his paintings are found in private and public collections in North America and Europe, and he is represented by galleries in Canada, the United States, France, and the United Kingdom.
In 2023, Jean Claude was awarded the Order of Newfoundland and Labrador.
