Mat Dube, a volatile mix of talent and indecision. Photo by Mike Levin.

By Mike Levin

Mat Dubé has poked his nose into a lot of creative expressions. Some have come easily, and have been fun; others have been a slog that drains one’s spirit. He battles two dilemmas: that he tends to be very good at any art he tries; and that indecision keeps him bouncing from one to another. “I know the rules of how to make money (from art). I just don’t know if I want to (follow them),” is his conclusion, so far.

You want to smack him, until a couple hours into coffees you realize that this indecision comes not from an inability to focus but from an insecurity that makes him question everything. In high school it made him pick fights and then taught him determination, but only temporarily.

Courtesy of Mat Dube.

“I couldn’t back down so I guess I started most of (the fights). Then I thought, wait a second, life will be easier if I don’t have enemies.” Dubé has always been quick to figure things out. He says he knows this, but there’s doubt written all over his face and in the way he uses self-deprecating humour to deflect emotion.  “Sometimes I like to see the humour in awkwardness. Maybe that’s my way of coping.”

He also knows he has talent and a love for creation. In his teens, Dubé decided he’d need a career in the arts to satisfy these urges. It’s why he followed a traditional path through school and into the job market. About six years ago, things started to change.

He grew up an Ottawa Francophone and was occasionally mocked because his (now-fluent) English only came in his teens. He’s lanky and co-ordinated, so sports were a major part of his life right into his 20s. And from childhood he could draw like a wizard, with gentle critiques from his mother, artist Jocelyn Langis.

“Both my parents had an appreciation for art and were encouraging. Yeah, they encouraged a career that would guarantee I was poor.” At De La Salle High School, multi-disciplinary training was the standard: “Hence my poor attention span.” Graphic illustration came most naturally, brought the most compliments. Dubé made a choice.

Courtesy of Mat Dube.

“I heard animation was good money.” So it was off to Algonquin College for classical training and then into a job illustrating TV shows for the Disney Channel. He says that animation had its moments of inspiration, in a technical sense, but that “it was like working in a factory… very unstable.” It was time for another choice.

He tried claymation, for fun, and then commercial illustration, for money. Both results were good, but both came with sell-by dates. That brought back the familiar frustration, and in 2004, encouraged by his mother, Dubé had to get away, first to Central America and then to Europe to check out the western world’s cauldron of creation.

“I was expecting to see a lot more fresh stuff, but (Europe) is so stuck in the past,” he says, although that didn’t stop him from staring for hours at marble sculptures in The Louvre. He tried to show his portfolio at some Paris galleries, and laughs at the memory.

“They were mortified, wouldn’t even look at me. Maybe they have 20 people a day bringing their stuff in, but it was strange. After awhile I found it entertaining,” he adds.

The time away did affect Dube’s creative process, almost gifting him a license to try new things, by drawing together threads he’d forgotten or never focused on before. Like the marble shapes in Paris that he couldn’t get out of his head.

In 2005 he enrolled at the Ottawa School of Art to see what sculpture might reveal. He took a mold-making course from David Clendining, loved it, and then took the same course again. It started a collaboration between teacher and student that led to two public commissions: a bronze set of kneeling soldiers and another for the Museum of Civilization.

His personal sculptures are stunning, almost animated in their voluptuousness. “It has to be figurative. I can’t do abstract art; I’m disabled because of my (graphic) training,” he says. People loved them, and galleries were wide open, but then the rationalizations started: bronze is too expensive; sculpture is too complicated to explain. He had enough doubts of his own; deconstructing his work wasn’t an attractive addition. Then came a job on an organic farm with his girlfriend and a more-serious move into music.

Courtesy of Mat Dube.

Dubé and Yves Néron had been mixing ambient tracks for 20 years. One day they looked at each other and said “let’s make an album.” StrayOtic was born.  “We didn’t know how to use the software, so we did it for eight months, day and night, and then (emerged) white, pasty and with no social skills left.”

There’s a clue to Dubé’s personality in his music. He’s not fond of performing live: “it’s horrible when it goes wrong.” The artist being caught in error, and it takes supreme self-confidence to slough it off and try again. Dube’s artistic confidence is splayed all over his output. But is it enough to make a commitment?

“I know to earn a living, you have to focus on one (discipline). Music is great for instant gratification, but it’s more about hype, creating a brand and getting yourself out there. Visual arts are a struggle. I have to clench my jaw hard until I get to see that it will work. There’s always a stage at the beginning when it looks like crap. I should stop working on it, but most I don’t.”

And maybe this is the key to Mat Dubé, a determination to work through the hard parts, often just to see if it can be done, and then getting turned on by the allure of some other choice. “People go through my portfolio and ask if I can do more of this or that. I’m, like, no! Everything is of equal interest at the time I’m doing it. I love it, but then…..”

He works at Arts Court 25 hours a week as an arts programmer. He talks to his mother at least three times a week, and occasionally they’ll work in the same space on their personal projects. “She’s a wacky mom, super loud, crazy personality, but when she walks into a room, people pay attention to her.” It’s called presence, and you’re born with it. Dubé figures he doesn’t have it and is forever asking the advice of others.

Courtesy of Mat Dube.

But he’s also begun to understand where his talents have brought him. If he was guaranteed a good living sculpting, but with the condition no one would ever see his product, Dubé wouldn’t take the deal. “I’m not really doing it for myself because thinking you can leave a mark is silly in the grand scheme of things.”

He loves people seeing different universes in his work, and the best compliment he’s ever received came from a janitor working at a place where Dubé was showing. He craves the gift of creative empathy, but that doesn’t lessen the nervousness about being 33 years old, talented and yet unable to choose a distinct path.

“That’s tricky. In theory I guess I can (choose a single discipline), but for the rest of my life? Maybe I don’t want to have to give up anything.”

It’s an indecision he’s chosen to live with, and maybe it will unleash another talent buried deep beneath all the questioning, something that he can accept, and that can accept him, unconditionally? Or maybe his creative process will never succumb to boundaries.  Sometimes in art, choice can be a fickle muse.