heather ROY

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.

I have drawn and painted since I was a child, so it naturally followed that I should study art and work in one of its many related fields; so, I became a high school art teacher. I studied in Ontario at the University of Windsor and York University, achieving an Honours BA with a major in Fine Arts from York University. For a number of years, I continued art studies at the Ontario College of Art in Toronto as a part-time student. Eventually, I left teaching to explore and further develop my own work in my main discipline of acrylic painting and mixed media.
I live on a 50-acre hobby farm outside of Peterborough Ontario, a piece of paradise, which I joyfully treasure.

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