Artist Statement:
My recent oil and mixed media works depict curious, dream-like scenes. They are inspired by sites explored while traveling abroad (pre-pandemic) and by landscapes discovered around British Columbia. Memories, imaginings, and my own photography are fused, morphing into surreal abstract landscape. These unlikely spaces often revisit familiar landscape tropes – with oceans, mountains, forests, and desert terrain meeting my less literal visual language of paint swaths, arcs, and floating forms. These images are intentionally ambiguous, inviting viewer interpretation and personal narrative. Incorporating ink transfers of my own photography, I blur boundaries between media; I embrace surreptitious transitions between the photographic transfers and the realistic application of oil paint framed by abstract forms. Hints of photography amid the painted fictions lend credibility to these imagined, fantastical worlds. Celestial, terrestrial, and aquatic motifs are present throughout the series. Ideas of regeneration, cycles, and the search for structure within ephemeral, fluid spaces seem to be recurring considerations. These fanciful paintings are intended as little moments of escapism—which for me, has taken on increased significance in 2020/2021.
Artist Bio:
I respectfully acknowledge that I live and paint as a guest on the beautiful ancestral territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. Formerly residing in Alberta, Nomi relocated to Vancouver, British Columbia in 2017. She graduated from the University of Alberta in 2008 with a Bachelor of Arts, Double Major with Distinction in Classics and Art & Design. Her work is featured in private collections across Canada, in the United States, France, and England. Two of her works have been acquired by Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada’s Visual Art Collection for permanent display at Canada House in London, England and at another Canadian diplomatic mission abroad. For the past decade, she has worked in various capacities with commercial galleries and public institutions, including the University of Alberta Art Collection and The Alberta Foundation for the Arts. Nomi currently works as an Art Handler in the Lower Mainland.
Lynn Valley Library
1277 Lynn Valley Rd
North Vancouver, BC
V7J 0A2
Tel: 604-984-0286
Fax: 604-984-7600
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