World champion living in Drumheller

 

Shannon LeClair – Times Reporter

 

Lucie Brouillard from Drumheller recently spent a week in Seeboden, Austria showing off her artistic skills. She competed in the World Bodypainting Festival, which ran from July 12 to 18. Brouillard has competed in the festival in the past and last year she won first place for face painting and third for body painting. This year she proudly brought home the title of the new world champion in brush/sponge body painting, and second place for face painting. 

“That was my aim, I won the North America body painting championships in Vegas this past winter. I just wanted the title once. I don’t need it anymore,” said Brouillard.  

Painters have themes to follow, and they are awarded points on a variety of things, from how well they followed the theme to how creative the work is. There were 48 countries competing and Brouillard beat out her fellow competitors by nine points. She does not plan to compete again next year, and said she has reached her goal and now it is time for someone else to have a chance. Brouillard’s work has been seen on many of the kid’s faces around Wheatland County. She was last in Standard for their sports days happily painting children’s faces.

Her model was a Viennese woman whom she had worked with in the past. The woman has been a body painting model for seven years, and this was the first time she had been with a painter who had won the championship.  Many of the models were passing out or sweating off some of the paint due to the 38-degree heat, but Brouillard’s model held up well. 

“You have six hours to paint the whole body, and you can have an assistant but I work on my own. My nickname was the PaintingMachine cause I did the work of two people.” 

Brouillard studied fine arts at Champlain College in Quebec 23 years ago. When she had finished school she needed a job and so she created her own, painting kids faces. 

“I really liked it and then, well if you paint a face you might as well paint a body, but that came gradually a little later. Sometimes life just brings you things, I didn’t choose that, it chose me.”  

Brouillard quickly fell in love with painting people and said she will only paint on canvas or create murals for her kids. 

“Canvas is different from painting on a body or face. I find it hard now to work on a flat surface is not as inviting it seems.”

Her focus now is to teach others her craft, and now that her name is well known in the industry she should receive more teaching offers. 

Brouillard had received teaching offers before she left and will be spending November in Pennsylvania, Brazil in January and Australia in February.   

“I’m going to do them all, they are not long, just 10 days so I can still spend lots of times with my kids.”