Quest Art's 2018 TD Wealth - Thor Wealth Management Group Art Prize

100 word Artist Statement: My practice creates connections across perceived boundaries (nations, cultures, times, ideas, disciplines, and so on). This arose from living in other countries (Japan, the US), traveling extensively (from Trinidad to Turkey) and marrying into Caribbean culture. An interest in conflating places and compressing eras also stems from the personal belief that one’s identity is unconstrained by geography, time, or physical body, as the soul —personality — infinitely evolves over many lifetimes across races, genders, classes, and ideologies. (And that these experiences subtly color the current lifetime). As a result of this and a non-institutional (autodidactic) approach, my practice is eclectic and experimental, a hybrid of collage, painting, sculpture and installation. K.I.A.: www.nu4ya.com

Dimensions: 83 x 59 x 4

100 word Artist Statement: My curiosity centers around the effervescence of human interaction beyond verbal communication. Through my sculptural work I explore the workings of our minds in terms of incomplete memory, avoidance and split attention through strategies of fragmentation, accumulation and scattering. After years of exploring these themes through biomorphic patterns in mixed media paintings, my work has extended into organic 3-dimensional sculptural forms. This move has freed me from the limitations of the panel and expanded the field of exploration. Through the fusion of common and uncommon materials, I search for a visual vocabulary that expresses the intangible nature of these subjects. 

Dimensions: 39 x 48 x 48

100 word Artist Statement: I specialize in mixed-media drawing and printmaking in two and three-dimensional form, collaboration and installation. My work originates from an open and continuing personal archive of objects and documentation of happenings and occurrences in local natural environments and ‘the home’. I intervene with the archive by rearrangement and manipulation until something, previously hidden, is revealed. Through suggestion and curiosity, imagination is triggered, and the objects come back to life as something new. Distorted and stripped of context, the sense of something familiar remains recognizable. It evokes our increasingly fluid and changing concepts of environment, home and community.

Dimensions: 75 x 55

100 word Artist Statement: ON

Dimensions: 81 x 81 x 6.35

100 word Artist Statement: Recently while on a camping trip to Northern Ontario, I became overwhelmed by memories of my childhood. Born in Kirkland Lake, I love the beauty, and quiet of Northern Ontario, but have spent many years living in and being influenced by the city. Now, as I start my own family, I find myself drawn back to the idyllic simple days of my youth, and a return to landscape. Visually, it is the dramatic rock cliffs and sparsely treed terrain of the North that is informing my current body of work. “The Rock Cliffs of Larder Lake II” is my most recent painting from this series.

Dimensions: 121.92 x 91.44 x 3.81

100 word Artist Statement: Selfie, is a series that portrays the complexity of identity. In it I explore the tension between the authentic and the ideal in contemporary selfie culture. Working in a traditional style and media I hope to bridge contemporary questions around truth and representation with the art of the Naturalists who’s work negotiates a visual and conceptual understanding of truth. The root of this series was my desire as a young artist to find my creative voice. By presenting the viewer with a series of impressions about my personality, the work aims to make a definitive statement about my artistic identity.

Dimensions: 16 x 16 x 1.5

100 word Artist Statement: I am a representational painter whose objective is to idealize the ordinary with the intention of engagement. I want to leave an open ended narrative with the most important aspect of my paintings is that they each tell a story. Yet, that the story is ambiguous, leaving it up to the viewer to develop the tale. I like the idea of there being an audience with the observer participating in a painting. I am interested in documenting the changing culture landscape of my people. Displaying natives in a modern setting, telling stories of who we are now. I have also become intrigued with the subtleties in shape and mannerisms. I like painting the human body showing movement and action. My work is a mix of influences from Andrew Wyeth to Edward Hopper to Alex Coville, figurative painters with a strong emphasis on composition. I like using vibrant colours and dark lines to pop out at the viewers. I believe angst is all too often represented in modern art, and there should be room for bright fun work.

Dimensions: 40 x 30 x 1.5

100 word Artist Statement: Through the collection and manipulation of societal ephemera I consider how art is able to embody what language defies and how the amalgam of materials affect the viewer. It is through the slow unfolding of the unaccustomed unions of discarded or mundane materials that a heightened awareness of the present – either physical or psychological – intensifies and affect is created. This work strives for a visceral response that could be triggered by the rich saturation of colours, palpable textures and familiar forms that are simultaneously alluring and repellent while maintaining a captivating presence during what it to come.

Dimensions: 30 x 30 x 5

100 word Artist Statement: My work takes inspiration from the urban environment. I aim to create a visual field of colour and shapes that are cohesive but at the same time, competing with one another.

Dimensions: 208 x 160 x 5

100 word Artist Statement: My new sculptures are like post-minimalist (graffiti) tags, in that through them, I am asserting my vision as a claim or proof of my existence. The raw physical effort inherent to the reductive practice of carving is a mark of the hand and a measure of time. While the hand's efforts are momentary, the resulting marks are captured in the permanence of the stone. Though my hand manipulates the stone, the veins in the stone speak of a hidden interior which can never be revealed. These new works are just as diaristic as my realistic sculptures, though they talk about existence rather than lived moments. Specifically, they talk about my existence in the modernist/minimalist language I have grown through. Elizabeth Fearon, 2018.

Dimensions: 10 x 18 x 8.5

100 word Artist Statement: The expression of balance is done through simple forms that use hard lines to dictate space and add fragility to some of the most structurally sound of materials.This method of precariousness balance allows for structures that appear sturdy to be delicate and become structures of observation not of function. The works themselves are free standing and do not use adhesives to maintain their upright composure but instead rely on the proper distribution of weight and synergy of elements within the structures themselves. The idea of balance is a predominant theme in many aspects of life. It was my hope to draw attention to these processes and show that many independent objects can work together to produce a functioning whole; one that could not exist if even one element was missing.

Dimensions: 38.1 x 40.64 x 22.86

100 word Artist Statement: Statement I have been working primarily with paint, paper and plaster on board and adding multiple layers. These get scratched into or sanded back exposing what lies beneath and then more layers are added. In quite a few instances I transfer photos onto this background, of things I see in my travels or on my walks. I am excavating which means to remove earth carefully and systematically from (an area) in order to find buried remains, delve, burrow, unearth, scrape. On one hand I am delving or digging into a painting and on the other I’m also digging deeper into myself.

Dimensions: 51 x 51 x 4

100 word Artist Statement: ON

Dimensions: 39 x 39 x 1

100 word Artist Statement: Dynasty explores family history and changing values. This series of still lifes documents objects found in my mother’s home in Barbados that carry the histories of multiple generations of my family. The objects range from Caribbean objects, such as baskets and sea shells, to fine glassware that my grandmother and great-aunt received as wedding gifts. Items that would traditionally be passed down through generations but as our family decreases in number, I am left with questions. - How are objects deemed essential for any middle-class home in one era unnecessary in another? Yet have finer craftsmanship than the objects now frequently found in Western homes. - What would I do with objects that I do not need yet have sentimental value? - As a childless woman, what would I do with the objects after I die?

Dimensions: 40 x 51 x 2

100 word Artist Statement: My work recently shifted from painting landscape that replicated structure and place to become more of a vessel that posses visual questions and suggests narrative. The new work is process driven. The paintings more or less paint themselves. A process of layering passages of mark-making and imaging, revealing and concealing creates an immersive, emotional map. The intention is to create a somewhat ambiguous, quirky environment that promotes a discussion with the viewer.

Dimensions: 90 x 120 x 5

100 word Artist Statement: My practice explores how queer identities are performed, how they shift and their relationship to the body. I investigate these ideas through sculptural and performative work that considers labour, maintenance of the body and the role of vulnerability in the queer community. My sculptures are reminiscent of body parts. They utilize silicone, hair and lace and often involve meticulously inserting hair into a form before a performer activates the work. Hair begins a conversation about bodily signifiers, cues that influence how we are perceived by others. It is a conceptual entry point through which the personal yet global relationships people have to their identities and each other can be investigated.

Dimensions: 40.5 x 40.5 x 12.5

100 word Artist Statement: In my practice, I focus on points of contact between nature and the built environment, particularly on human relations to trees and bodies of water. In the past I’ve transformed 2D etchings into 3D paper structures that relate to heading into the wilderness (trailers, boardwalks and bridges). Increasingly I am considering our relation to species with whom we co-habit. In this new body of drawings, I collaborate with worms that have created meandering trails into the surfaces of dead logs. First I do rubbings of the worm markings. Then I contrast these rubbings with drawn images of elaborate human-made constructions.

Dimensions: 51 x 50

100 word Artist Statement: I have always had an obsessive personality. Much of my work is drawn from that obsessiveness; I create situations where I am obliged to do repetitive tasks in order to create my work in a systematic fashion. For several years, I spent time exploring the relationship between me and my mother through various craft practices. I examined the parallel actions we took in our daily lives that were obsessive and escapist in nature. My mother’s obsession is her passion for reading Romance novels, while mine is the repetition and labour-intensive quality of using domestic craft as a medium in my studio practice. Eventually I expanded to other areas that included my friend, family, and self.

Dimensions: 86 x 58

100 word Artist Statement: My photographs capture transient moments that reveal objects or places that are altered or detached from their natural function or place. I seek scenes that emphasize a strong sense of absence or isolation. Images that evoke a concern for the people who aren’t there; “Who was just here?” or “Where did they go?” or “Who’s about to show up here?” are all questions that inspire me to seek out a splendour we seldom notice; revealing that beauty can be strange — and the strange can be beautiful.

Dimensions: 66.04 x 91.44 x 3

100 word Artist Statement: As technology and knowledge expands, our lives are more complex and therefore suffer from significant fragmentation. This fragmentation creates gaps in perception that leads to a multiplicity of realities. These gaps propagate and intensify the inherent paradoxes of the human experience. Aesthetically the work tackles the problem by creating a connection with the viewer while attempting to establish an idealized perception of individuality whilst existing in a flawless conceptual realm that has been impacted by the digital revolution. This work helps describe, define and expose an aspect of the new psychology of our current culture.

Dimensions: 150 x 183 x 5