STATEMENT
I am fascinated both by materials and by philosophies of matter. Specifically, I’m curious how we perceive ourselves in relation to the physical world and how these intrinsic perceptions are paralleled, metaphorically, by the act of creating visual objects.
In consequence, I’ve been thinking in terms of new materialist philosophies which are an environmentalist and feminist way to interpret the interactions between internal perceptions and the external world. Fluctuating between representation and abstraction, my artworks use the malleability of visual language to address these ambiguities of perception.
I am currently painting with an oil emulsion on plaster where the pigment and surface become inseparable, much as we are inseparable from our physical environment. I think of the paintings as objects in the world and so place the works in conversations amongst themselves and with the space around them. By filtering my own experiences of place and body through neo-materialist thought processes and the act of painting itself, images surface, hover indeterminately. The paintings reference an almost schizophrenic understanding of the rhizomatic nature of all and everything, while brooding on specific moments of intra-activity. The paint soaks into the surface, and yet is removable by sanding and scraping. The images are permitted to emerge, and then rebutted. The interpretation of image, or the hunt for it thus evokes an awareness of perception; the paintings, as objects, take over some of the control. My paintings address the inextricability of meaning, nonsense, myself, or the world, from myself, itself: from matter.
BIO
Moving from her childhood home, a rural community north of Peterborough, Ontario, Esther Hoflick completed her B.A. Honours in Studio Arts from the University of Guelph in 2007 - with a minor in English Literature. In 2012, the artist moved to Montreal where she lived and worked until her MFA at the University of Ottawa, 2017-19. The artist also occasionally spends summers camping in Dawson City, Yukon and currently, is a professor of Fine Arts at Northwestern Polytechnic in Northern Alberta.
Hoflick was the co-founder of Night Owl Contemporary, a gallery for emerging artists in Montreal, and ran The Living Art Room, a small community-based art school. She worked as curator for Artbomb Montreal, a daily auction of Canadian art, and received a grant from the Québec Jeunes Volontaires program. She has worked as a studio assistant for painters Peter Barron and Richard Hayman in Peterborough, Don Russell, in Guelph, and John Brown, in Toronto. Her work has been exhibited at Artspace, in Peterborough; the Art Gallery of Guelph; Espace Projet, in Montreal; Galerie UQO, in Gatineau, QC, and Gallery Karsh Mason in Ottawa, among others.