Animated Aesthetic: Bridging Disciplines

Marc Beurteaux is an artist who lives, works, and creates in Hastings County. While his online presence currently highlights his work in animation and film, he is increasingly becoming known for his sculptures, which build upon and expand his earlier creative pursuits.

Fifteen years ago, Beurteaux and his partner traded the hustle and bustle of Toronto for the quiet of the countryside. They settled on an 80-acre farm north of Marmora, complete with woodland and outbuildings to explore. The landscape has become an essential part of his artistic process. “It’s a huge supermarket of stuff…I wanted to live in nature, just to see what it was like. It definitely watered down my ego…this is what the world really is: nature. It broadened my horizons and my outlook.” It also provided the source material for his sculptures.

“The farm had a lot of junk…when I see anything, I see the potential for it to be art,” says Beurteaux, describing how his new surroundings inspired his foray into sculpture. “It’s like it was meant to be – I just started making stuff.” Many of his works are made from found objects sourced on the property—rusted scrap metal, old tools, and other discarded materials. By transforming these remnants, Beurteaux gives new life to forgotten objects. “I see anything, I look at anything and I think, that could be useful.”

But even creativity has its limits. Over time, Beurteaux found his collection of materials overwhelming rather than inspiring. After years of accumulating, he recently cleared his studio. “It felt like I was more imaginative. It’s almost like the less you have, the more [room] you have to think. When I have too much stuff…it gets to be too much. I’ve done a great purge, and I feel like a new man.”

Beurteaux’s raw, industrial aesthetic crosses mediums, forming a bridge between his animation work and his sculpture. Each discipline fuels the other. When sculpting, he often imagines how a piece might move on screen. “That’s why I like making my own short films—you also get to build the props, characters, backgrounds…that’s what led me to doing more sculpture, because I loved doing the set decoration so much, that it was natural for me to start sculpting.”

His creative roots remain grounded in film and animation. Last year, he made a short film for the Small Town Shorts Film Festival, which was screened in Campbellford. The event—co-hosted by the Marmora & Lake and Trent Hills public libraries—celebrated the depth of creative talent in small towns. “There are way more filmmakers in this area than you think,” says Beurteaux.

In a post on the Canadian Animation Blog, he reflected on what drives his work. “It was the realization that you could create worlds within your own animated films. It’s incredibly addictive to see what comes out of your imagination.” He feels the same pull toward sculpture. “With sculpture, it’s almost more fun in a way, because it’s a bit more instantaneous. You just get a couple pieces and then suddenly they fit together and there it is. There’s the face. There’s the sculpture. Just the joy of watching pieces come together and form something. It’s just totally addictive. I’ll never get sick of that.”

Beurteaux describes losing all sense of time while working. “When you’re animating, time means nothing…same with sculpture…I could be working for hours and hear the dog bark and then [think], ‘oh yeah, I should have fed them an hour ago’…time bends and stretches and just becomes a new reality. Mostly time flies.”

And as if animation and sculpture weren’t enough, Beurteaux is now exploring another
creative pursuit: writing. “Writing’s hard, though. It’s harder than sculpting. I’d like to delve
into that a bit more…I’m always doing stuff…Hopefully I always will [be].”

While his sculptures don’t yet have an online presence, Beurteaux continues to share his
animation and film work online. A website featuring his sculpture is coming soon—another
medium through which this ever-curious artist will continue shaping the worlds he imagines.

vimeo.com/marcbeurteaux

This article was previously published in the Fall 2025 Vol. 34 No. 3 issue of Umbrella.