ARTIST STATEMENT AND BIOGRAPHY, (DECEMBER 2022)
Image of me visiting: Jónsi, Hrafntinna (Obsidian), 2021 at The AGO
ARTIST STATEMENT
Michelle Forsyth is a Canadian multi-disciplinary artist. Her work includes many diverse practices including: painting, sculpture, printmaking, weaving, performance, photography, and writing. She holds a BFA from the University of Victoria, an MFA from Rutgers University, and a Certificate in Creative Writing from the University of Toronto. Forsyth is represented by Corkin Gallery and currently holds a tenured position at OCAD University in Toronto where she lives and works. The artist's recent creative output interweaves themes of repetition, domestic labour, and the building of stories. Her sources material is drawn from her own wardrobe, and personal objects.
The precursor to this work, Letters for Kevin, examined the plaid patterns of her ex-husband’s shirts; she reverse engineered his garments by weaving their patterns back into cloth, exploring the interplay between mass-produced design and the intimacy of hand-woven cloth. Her series, Small Plaids grew from the work made in Letters to Kevin, and comprises of five inch watercolour studies that reinterpret commercial textile motifs through fluid brushwork, pooled watercolour pigment, and visible gesture.
Following a diagnosis with young-onset Parkinson’s disease over a decade ago, Forsyth has deepened her investigation of how the body’s physical shifts and informs the process of creation as well as her personal relationship with her own clothing over time. In Footnotes, the artist used photography to turn the camera towards her own wardrobe as her marriage dissolved. Using her own attire as fodder, enabled the artist to explore the limitations of her disabled body. These works depict her now unsuitable garments, bundled against various coloured backgrounds.
During a sabbatical year 2019-2020, Forsyth made a radical shift in her practice, when she used photography to document her own private performances depicting her own body within patterned environments reflective of her changing relationship to her home and objects close to her. This series of work comprised of a suite of large-format, self portraits where she performs wrapped in patterned garments of her own making. posed against matching painted backdrops. Through screen printing and fabric construction, she transformed her body into both subject and camouflage, appearing and disappearing within her own designs. These photographs document her physical engagement with handmade objects, presenting her movements, gestures, and body language as layered with intention and intimacy.
A standout work, Houndstooth Jacket 1 (2021), features Forsyth obscuring her head with a patterned textile while her hands emerge holding the piece, foregrounding her embodied relationship with the hand constructed garment. The repetition of houndstooth in the jacket and backdrop echoes themes of movement, identity, and transformation, while subtle imperfections in stitching and paint reveal hand made marks and the artist’s lived presence. Another highlight from this series—Improvisation 5: Cloud Head 1 (2022)—which continues the series into more sculptural and atmospheric forms of wrapped portraits and exploring how pattern and identity shift through performance and concealment.
Forsyth is currently on sabbatical again and after a recent fall that sent her to the hospital for three months, the artist now lives in fear of falling again. Despite her hardship, she is thankful to the good friends and Personal Support Workers that enable her to continue to live and work from home. Recently, her work was supported by a grant from the Ontario Arts Council, and is continuing to produce work. A series of work personifying the colourful items in her home. She has created complex and thought-provoking autobiographical works entitled: "All the Things that Make this Home: A Kind of Unraveling and Re-building of the Human Spirit." The finished works speak to the human experience of loneliness, with all of its dreams and reveries, as well as its nightmares and sorrows. This work may seen similar to the rest of her oeuvre, yet each item is carefully folded and displayed on furniture items in her home.
In addition to this work, Michelle holds a fraught relationship with her family, yet holds close relationships with her two younger sisters, as well as Tara, a close family friend. She recently completed a manuscript for a memoir "When I Close My Eyes I See Orange." It is her first memoir.
BIOGRAPHY
Michelle Forsyth holds an MFA with an emphasis on Mixed Media from Rutgers University (New Brunswick, NJ); and a BFA with an emphasis on Photography and Sculpture from the University of Victoria (Victoria, BC) and recently completed a Certificate in Creative Writing from the University of Toronto. Her work has been exhibited both locally and internationally at venues including: Corkin Gallery (Toronto, ON); Mulherin + Pollard, (New York, NY); Zaum Projects (Lisbon, Portugal); The BRIC Arts Media House (Brooklyn, NY); Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar (Doha, Qatar); Pentimenti Gallery (Philadelphia, PA); Auxiliary Projects (Brooklyn, NY); The Hunterdon Museum of Art (Clinton, NJ); The Luminary Center for the Arts (St. Louis, MO); The Charleston Heights Arts Center (Las Vegas, NV); Deluge Contemporary Art (Victoria, BC); and Mercer Union (Toronto, ON). She has been the recipient of grants from the Canada Council for the Arts (Ottawa, ON); Toronto Arts Council (Toronto, ON); The Ontario Arts Council (Toronto,ON); Artist Trust (Seattle, WA). Her work in print has been supported by Awards from the Larry Sommers Memorial Fellowship (Seattle Print Arts, WA); and the Nick Novak Fellowship (Open Studio, Toronto, ON). She has been an artist in residence at: The Frans Masereel Centrum (Kasterlee, Belgium); The Banff Centre (Banff AB); The Textile Centre (Blöndos, Iceland); and The University of Southern Maine (Gorham, ME). Michelle Forsyth currently holds a tenured position at OCAD University (Toronto, ON); and is represented by Corkin Gallery (Toronto, ON).