Plume Latraverse shows paintings for the first time at 80 at Montreal's Noir et Rouge gallery
The iconic Montreal songwriter and painter has never had an official exhibition—until now. "Chansons à l'huile" opens at the Vieux-Montréal gallery, displaying work he's been creating since the 1960s.
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For five decades, Plume Latraverse has been known as Montreal's poet-songwriter—but painting has always been central to his creative life. Now, at 80, he is showing his visual work in an official exhibition for the first time.
"Chansons à l'huile" (Oil Songs) opened recently at the Noir et Rouge gallery in Vieux-Montréal, displaying paintings Latraverse has created since the 1960s. His canvases hung in a tavern called L'Inspecteur Épingle during the 1990s, named after a character from one of his novels, but no proper gallery show had ever been devoted to his visual art.
The title of the exhibition draws from how Latraverse himself describes his creative range. In a 2015 interview, he explained: "I have songs in oil, songs in charcoal, caricature songs, and other watercolours." For him, painting and songwriting have never been separate pursuits. As he told interviewers, "When I paint, at a moment I start to write songs."
Latraverse's path to visual art began in the 1960s, when he rejected what he saw as conformist values—the "American way of life" of buying cars and bungalows. Instead, he gravitated toward the arts. "People were walking around with sketch pads more than guitars back then," he reflected in a Radio-Canada documentary series called "D'un Plume à l'autre." He spent time in taverns drawing portraits to learn his craft, paid in drafts of beer by patrons.
Gallery owner Marc Durand, who has known Latraverse since organizing a concert for him at Cégep de Saint-Laurent in 1976, pursued reconnecting with the artist to bring his visual work to public attention. Durand later worked as a music video director and tour manager during Latraverse's 1996 Grande Saloplumerie tour. At 80, Latraverse rarely grants interviews, citing frustration with what he calls human ignorance, but he agreed to this exhibition.
The show marks a rare moment: a chance to see the visual foundation of a songwriter whose work has defined several generations of Montreal's cultural landscape.
