Artist's Talk at the Art Gallery of Peterborough

Toronto artist Heather Graham will be giving a talk on her exhibition "so lightly here" at the Art Gallery of Peterborough, 250 Crescent Street. Admission is free and all are welcome to attend. The exhibition runs until April 30.

Using found images as a starting point in her current work, this series of recent oil paintings created by this emerging Toronto artist are based on anonymous images. Presenting closely cropped faces with no discernable ground, Graham utilizes large house brushes in her intriguing painting style to eliminate fine detailed brushstrokes, giving her process-orientated works a haunting and ephemeral quality.

Deconstructing traditional conventions of the formal portrait genre, these striking works capture an ambiguous balance of tension and familiarity. She explains, “My subjects are strangers based on existing images, chosen because they are photographed from life as it is lived. The images have no body; the only information is provided in the gesture and expression of the face. There is no knowledge of what the subject is responding to in their environment. The sense of intimacy counter-balances the distance established physically.”