Artist Statement & BiographyI've been making art for over thirty years. During that time, I've created works using a wide variety of mediums that range from traditional sculpture, drawing, painting, performance-art and site-specific procedures (reorganizing materials in-situ and installing objects) to emerging methods such as email art (scambaiting) and digital drawing (tablet or iPad Art).
A common theme in these diverse works is the desire to test the boarders between disciplines and mediums (i.e., our institutionally-constructed definitions). Of course, curiosity and pleasure are also important motivations for me whenever I make an artwork.
Most recently, I began making interactive sculptures from wood, metal and plastic. My interest in viewer-interaction goes back to 1992 when I read a book titled, The Re-Enchantment of Art by Suzi Gablik. This art theorist and critic encourages artists to return to art-making that's "...communicative and compassionately responsive" instead of making art that favours objectification, permanence and egocentricity (i.e., more community-centred and less academic).
At the very heart of things, my artworks are an attempt to understand and communicate something familiar to the viewer about being embodied in this fragile, sensing vessel of flesh and bone. Ultimately, it's a longing to understand the reality of being alive; its joy and its heartache and its "thousand natural shocks".
I received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1990 and a Master of Fine Arts degree in 1995. I've received project grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts and the Saskatchewan Arts Board.
I've participated in group and solo art exhibitions in Canada and the United States. My artworks are housed in public and private collections. Some of my sculptures are on permanent display in parks in Saskatchewan and Alberta.
Currently, I maintain a studio in Calgary, Alberta, Canada where I also teach aspiring young artists at the University of Calgary.
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© 2023, Terry Reynoldson