Penelope Stewart

    
Penelope Stewart
Open Studio Toronto, Ontario, Canada
penelope.stewart@rogers.com
penelopestewart.ca yaelbrotman.com


Biography

Penelope Stewart’s work while rooted in print and drawing encompasses large installations, sculpture and photography. Her work is included in public and private collections most notably the Department of Foreign Affairs, Canada; Cambridge Galleries, Ontario and the Ontario Securities Commission, Ontario. Recent exhibitions include the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, NY; CEPA, NY; Lotusland, California; Musée d’art de Joliette, Québec and Craft ACT, Canberra, Australia. Stewart received an MFA from SUNY Buffalo, New York, and has received numerous grants and awards. In 2010 Stewart was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of the Arts (RCA). She was born in Montréal, Québec and currently lives in Toronto.

Themed Panel (Suggested)

The Wacousta Syndrome.
Wacousta was the first novel produced in colonial Canada. Written by John Richardson, it is about an officer who leaves the fort to survive in the bush. This sets the stage for a long and enduring history of artists mining the narrative potential of the polarity between wilderness and the built environment. We discuss the work of contemporary print-based artists who, through interdisciplinarity, explore responses to the wilderness and the impact on identity.

From the complex image systems of First Nations peoples, to the early Europeans’ mapping and annotated drawings, and the Group of Seven’s plein aire paintings, artists historically have documented the land. Their cumulative visualization of the wilderness is infused in the national psyche.

In contemporary society, the spectrum of responses to remote landscapes has broadened. Richer diversity is now the reality of Canadian life with its make-up of immigrant citizenry and a continually reinvigorated armature of identity. Yet the wilderness continues to hold in thrall the evolving Canadian imagination. Despite our population’s overwhelming inhabitation of cities along the southern border, curiously, we still define ourselves by our relationship to The North.

Open Folio

Boundless and Borderless: a portfolio exchange project between Open Studio Toronto Canada and Sydney Printmakers, Sydney, Australia
After attending Impact 7 in Melborune, Australia a group from Toronto’s Open Studio, Canada and Sydney Printmakers, Australia embarked on a portfolio exchange. Canada and Australia have similar histories of settlement and colonization. The landscape looms large in both imaginations, as does the spirit of the explorer and adventurer.  Each artist in the Boundless and Borderless portfolio has viewed the theme from their own perspective, conjuring up personal experiences and interpreting their ideas with a variety of printmaking techniques.  The Boundless and Borderless portfolio, 2013 comprises forty-four handmade prints and six A/P’s, created by artists from Open Studio, Canada (22) and Sydney Printmakers, Australia (22).