heather ROY
ARTIST STATEMENT
My paintings are meditations and daydreams about human relationships and how we fit or don’t fit in our environment. Our discomforts, the myths and incongruences we live with, how we feel about being in the world at this time. We have become a truly global society, but we still live in a tribal swamp of unresolved human emotion that exists in an uneasy partnership with the highly sophisticated communications network linking us to worlds far beyond our imagination.
I paint from a deep place. Mostly oils, presently encaustic – I feel the medium and intent draw me in to what is always an adventure.
Many years ago, I began working in an abstract fashion, allowing me access to the pure world of form and feeling that is always restricted by representation. While life drawing was an important part of my practice, it did not feature in my painting.
Several years ago, I had a change of heart and began to want to use figures to communicate. I went back to school, and took 12 courses at the Toronto School of Art to help me render my figure drawing in fully realized painted compositions.
My recent work reflects both these directions, and I am working towards a synthesis that will offer scope for the pathos of human life and the openness afforded by abstraction. Always, my goal is to create work that reaches deeply inside the viewer, to tender, vulnerable and nonverbal places.
BIOGRAPHY
CV - heather ROY
Education
D.S.C. – Diploma in Child Studies, University of Toronto Institute of Child Studies
B.A. in Philosophy, Trent University
D.E.C. in Visual Arts, Dawson College, Montreal
Courses
Artist-in-Residence, Creative Retreat, Gardenstown, Scotland 2017
Toronto School of Arts 2002, 2003, 2014, 2015, 2016
Haliburton School of the Arts 2002, 2004, 2006, 2009
Teaching
Past Teaching Events:
Blyth Academy Global High School 2016
The Painted Tree, Cobourg, Ontario
Workshops in Abstract Painting 2010-2012
Kawartha Pine Ridge District School Board – Art Teacher 1989-2013
Art Exhibits to 2019
Solo Exhibitions
• Furby’s Bookstore, Port Hope 2018
• Edward Jones Gallery, Cobourg, Ontario 2014
• “Islands and Gardens” Art Gallery of Northumberland, Port Hope, July 2014
• “Get a Life” Colborne Gallery, Colborne, Ontario, July 2011
Group Exhibitions
• Ganaraska Art and Framing, Port Hope, Ontario 2013, 2014
• Etobicoke Art Centre, Etobicoke, Ontario – ’Beauty in the Eye’, 2012
• Furby’s Bookstore, Port Hope, Ontario – “Champainting”, 2012
• Pop Up Show, Queen Street Port Hope, Ontario 2012
• Port Hope Jazz Festival, Port Hope, Ontario 2012
• Ganaraska Studio Tour, Port Hope, Ontario 2009, 2010, 2011, 2014
• Colborne Art Gallery, Colborne, Ontario 2009-2012
• Journey Through the Arts Gallery, Port Hope Ontario 2008, 2009
• The Blue Tomato, Peterborough, Ontario 2009
• Artsite, Peterborough, Ontario ‘The Nude’ 2008
• Cossars Gallery, Peterborough, Ontario 2006
• Visual Arts Centre of Clarington, Bowmanville, Ontario 2006
• Northumberland Art Gallery, Cobourg, Ontario 2003, 2004
• Northumberland Hills Studio Tour, Port Hope 2002