Bio
Heather Gentleman lives and works in Toronto. Her education includes a MFA from Chelsea College of Art in London, UK, an Honours BA in Fine Arts at the University of Guelph. Her work has won several international arts awards and has been featured in several books, magazines, design annuals and media, in local, national and international media. She has exhibited in twenty-three solo and eighty group exhibitions, including the AGO as part of the Environment Film Festival and is represented in collections throughout North America and Europe. She was chair of the selection committee, Propeller Gallery for ten years, and ran her own gallery and art school at the Distillery for fourteen years. She continues to exhibit in London as well as Europe and Asia. She has also been awarded several local and international residencies including a one year residency at WAAC, Convento in Portugal and the upcoming Arctic Circle Residency on a tallship located in the Svalbard Archipelago. She is currently an instructor at the Ontario College of Art and Design University.
Artist statement
Heather Gentleman's work is narrative in nature, finding inspiration in literature, political commentary, history, and mythology. She explores how ideas, themes and social mores recur and are paralleled from one time period to another and how our understanding of the past is shaped by our own contemporary viewpoint. Her practice is focused primarily on painting and drawing, but also integrates sculpture, text, and performance including interactive installations to create a cross pollination across genres. Characters peer out as strangers that belong to a separate, surreal world, telling stories with the sensibility of an intimate conversation, expressing universal motifs that bridge with the personal.