Biography

Teresa Healy was born and raised in Lindsay, Ontario, she moved to the Maritimes to study Fine Art at Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick. Teresa completed her BFA in 1990 and then headed West to participate in the Photography Program at the Banff Centre for the Arts. From Banff she moved to Vancouver where she continued her development as an artist, while working as a photo-technician for the Emily Carr Institute and as a fine art photographer for the Vancouver Art Gallery. Since 2000, she has been able to concentrate on her artwork full-time.

Her work has been exhibited in New Brunswick, Saskatchewan and British Columbia and is included in private collections in Canada and Denmark.

Artist's Statement

Landscape and colour are my inspiration. The imagery in my paintings is an abstraction of landscape drawn from memory and photographs. Colour has a very powerful evocative effect on me and is a central component of my work. I am interested in exploring both the visual effects of colour and the inherent qualities of wood through my paintings.

Painting on plywood allows me to work the medium in both an additive and subtractive way. I can build up the paint or carve it away. Plywood is a durable, versatile material, which can absorb paint like paper but also stands up to many layers of glazes. I use everything from sandpaper to wood gouges and a rotary bit tool to alter the material and make use of the natural grain and colour of the wood in the composition. The marks I leave behind are evidence of my physical involvement in the process and heighten the feeling of energy in the work. Creating visual tension through the use of contrasting colours, opposing textures and actual versus illusory spatial effects also helps to activate the work.

Patterson Ewen’s work had a profound effect on me as an art student and was my initial inspiration to paint on plywood. I have found that this process satisfies my compulsion to combine sculptural methods with traditional painting techniques in order to create work that is experimental, discovery oriented and visually stimulating.

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