Portrait of the artist
Who
Ginette Thibault, 54
Where
St-Denis-sur-Richelieu, Que.
What she was
Senior project manager for a financial group
What she is
Painter
How she made the leap
On a bitterly cold February day 12 years ago, Ginette Thibault was at her desk preparing for a 3 p.m. meeting. Then 41, she spent an average of 70 hours a week at work and prided herself on arriving at the office each morning in time to watch the sunrise. But that day something shifted irrevocably. Fifteen minutes before the meeting, she quietly put on her coat, shut her office door behind her and walked out for good on a career that had spanned most of her adult life.
Thibault had no idea she would one day replace her stylish business suit with an artist's smock, and her briefcase with a paintbrush. She'd never taken a painting class, much less entertained the idea of a career in the arts. "The only art class I ever took was in high school and I certainly didn't stand out in any way," she says. "I was just your average student taking the class to get my diploma."
Fast-forward to 2009. Thibault has just returned from an art show featuring a collection of her watercolour paintings in Belgium, followed by a solo exhibit in France. Home is now St-Denis-sur-Richelieu, a small rural village east of Montreal. There, she and her partner, Jean-François Mérard, own and operate an antique shop. And that's where Thibault can now be found most days, hard at work on a painting in a corner of the store she's claimed as her workspace. Surrounded by antique furniture, scented candles and the exotic plants that are Mérard's passion, she has never been happier.
An out-of-character move paves the way for happiness
"My exit from the corporate world was abrupt, and could be viewed as irresponsible," says Thibault. "It was completely out of character and I know now it signalled the onset of severe depression." Her life had begun to go awry a few years earlier when her father passed away from cancer and a long-term relationship skidded to a bitter end. Her solution had been to direct even more energy into her work. "It was rewarding for a while and it gave me control over at least one aspect of my life," she explains. On her last day on the job, however, the ironclad control crumbled.
Thibault spent the next three years on medical leave, in therapy and in search of a new way to measure her self-worth. Until then, she thought her only talent lay in brain-driven activities such as strategic planning, project management and number crunching. She now found herself on a quest to succeed at something that came from the heart.
Thibault's first foray into the creative world was a ceramics painting class. She then experimented with pastels and oils, but the real revelation came in 2002 when she and Mérard took a watercolour class. She quickly fell in love with the medium and the soft, harmonious blend of colours achieved through it. It also awakened an untapped talent.
