Artist Spotlight: Lindsay Chambers
Lindsay Chambers' work has become a fast favourite of mine. As described on her website "Her work explores the delicacies of the human condition through paintings based on crumpled paper sculptures." As described by me...her work is very freaken' cool.
It's fair to say I'm far less eloquent.
When I reached out to Lindsay Chambers asking to feature her on my Artist Spotlight series, she replied saying she'd been following me as well! Completely made my day!
Let's get to know Lindsay Chambers...
Tell me a bit about your journey, were you always an artist?
My career as an artist has often co-existed with other career paths but I have always maintained a studio practice and have been fortunate to find exhibiting opportunities. In 2003, I graduated with an Honours BA in Fine Art and Psychology from the University of Waterloo. This was the first year I participated in the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition. In 2004, I completed a post graduate certificate in 3D for Broadcast Animation and Design at Humber College. I continued to paint during this time and quickly realized that a career in the 3D Animation industry was not where I wanted to be. Essentially broke, I rented a small corner in the art studio of a friend and started painting full-time. I worked as an Art Educator at a local gallery to pay bills, exhibited and participated in juried shows when I could. In 2007, I completed my Bachelor of Education and moved to the UK to teach, exhibit and eventually recruit teachers overseas. During this time, I traveled extensively immersing myself in the vast amount of Art Galleries available in the UK, Europe and South East Asia. I had found a wood-shop to make my stretchers and continued to exhibit in juried art exhibitions in the UK. In 2009, I returned to Toronto where started up my painting practice in full force, squeezing into shows I had missed the deadline for and looking for a steady job while filling my days painting after submitting resumes. I eventually landed a contract government job with the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities. When my contract was over I began painting full-time again. Throughout the following 10 years, I have had so many successes both in Art and life, having three children, painting, exhibiting, selling and receiving commissions of my work.
As designers we see an evolution in our style and aesthetic, I assume the same holds true for artists. What was your evolution like? How has it evolved?
In my artistic practice I strive to evolve and challenge myself. In that way, my subject matter and technique has varied over the years while other aspects of my practice have remained consistent.
To this day, I prefer to work with grey scale and consider myself a process painter, focusing not on realism but in the manipulation of materials and layers.
Early in my career these areas of interest focused on urban landscape where buildings often blended into the sky and with one brush stroke, both building and sky could be both joined and separated. These works were very textured and utilized warm and cool values of grey to create a sense of space while textured brushwork emphasized the surface of the canvas.
In the later urban landscape works reflections began to receive a lot of my attention and I began to intentionally incorporate reflective subject matter into my work. Occasionally this meant that objects on the interior of a window came into view and in a few storefronts there were light fixtures such as chandeliers and other reflective surfaces. This led to my next series where I started to seek out reflective surfaces, often silver or glass and found a revitalization in the organic abstracted shapes present in the surface. This series was painted in much thinner application and aimed to maintain early sketching layers of painting including drips from the underpainting.
Subject matter was secondary to my interest in the way light was presented and reality became abstracted.
I explored this series for about six years.
In 2015, I started thinking about paper, and the beauty in its limited range of contrast. I began to experiment with origami, and other maquette compositions. From that moment, this paper series has been in constant evolution exploring aspects of the human state of mind in relation to paper.
What is the message behind your art? What do you want people to take away or feel through your pieces?
Paper, by virtue of its intended function, has a relationship with the human need to communicate with others, to direct emotion, thoughts, values and knowledge. Even without obvious markings upon its surface, even if crumpled and discarded or arranged in a particular way, there is a universal understanding that the paper carries a memory in its form and gesture of its previous handler.
Paper is made for people to manipulate, and my work explores this manipulation. In a time of emotional exhaustion and with a need to speak to someone who was unreachable, this series emerged as a landing space to place thoughts and statements upon paper to rid them from the mind.
There appeared a beauty in the ambiguity of the illegible text. The vague concept that one’s most private thoughts are present just within the folds of the paper.
This series is in constant evolution, it has explored paper through pattern, image and gesture, all evolving from the study of paper as a communicative device expressing the emotion or commentary of the human state of mind.
Did you ever have insecurities with sharing your work? If so how did you get over that?
If I ever had insecurities about sharing my work, they were quashed very quickly during my undergrad. Art is visual and in a shared studio environment there is no privacy to work out issues or wait until the final version is perfect before it is shared with others. Critiques of work are regular occurrences in this environment and I am so thankful to have had this experience. Art requires a viewer and could be considered incomplete if it exists alone.
This doesn’t mean that I’m always full of confidence but I am accepting of others views about my work and see it as part of the process. To be quite honest, this is why I often continue to participate in Art Fairs. Comments of all kinds fly about in this environment. If I hear the same comment too often and it does not align with my intentions of the piece, I take note. Perhaps I wasn’t successful in expressing what I had intended. Its all fuel for the studio.
Sometimes I come across a quote that speaks to my core so intensely I have to share it with others. Do you have a favourite quote that has touched you or pushed you in some way?
I don’t tend to be a quote type of person, but my favourite song is
. I could quote the whole song because it speaks to so many emotions. The song starts...
“Operator, number please, Its been so many years Will she remember my old voice While I fight the tears? Hello, hello there, is this Martha? This is old Tom Frost And I am calling long distance Don’t worry ‘bout the cost ‘Cause it’s been forty years or more Now Martha please recall Meet me out for coffee Where we’ll talk about it all”
I think about this song so often as I paint. The past lives on for this man as he thinks back on his life. His determination to put aside his anguish to reach out to connect with Martha is so emotionally weighted. I know this is not the traditional inspirational quote, but it speaks of determination, love, loss and regret but also about hope and devising a plan for the future. It pulls on my heartstrings and fills me with emotion which I try to fuel into my work.
What's been the toughest part about turning your passion/art into a business?
The most difficult aspect of turning my passion into a business has been balance. The past two years have been so full of projects and commissions, that I’ve had to turn people away who have requested work. I have had a supply and demand issue, in essence. My time has to go into developing new work and painting because its a full time endeavour just to fulfil my orders, exhibitions, galleries, and personal need to develop new ideas. Once my work day begins, I will paint for 6-7 hours with only a quick lunch break. I rarely have time for the administrative side of a business, let alone the gym! It is because of this balance/supply and demand issue that I decided to launch a select grouping of
, with the option of pre-curated framing (launching January 2020). I am so pleased with the quality of these prints (and I’m a perfectionist when it comes to my work). I’ve had a lot of pre-orders for my first release and although this adds another level of administration to my business, I am just so happy to be able to offer another solution to satisfy requests for my work.
Who are your favourite artists or influences and why?
I am most influenced by artists whose process is evident in the finality of the piece. I love texture and seeing the materials as they are moved around a surface. I am most drawn to artists whose work is different from my own, to explore other’s techniques and manipulation of materials. If I had to pick an all time favourite artist, I would have to pick,
. His absolute obsession for his work and need to create is evident in his vast collection and his story is equally captivating. The spontaneity of his creations, the loose and gestural markings and the process off adding and taking away, never disappoints.
Five favourite things right now?
Boardgames on a quiet afternoon
Pilates with my amazing instructor
A snuggly reading session with my three littles who are 8, 6 and 2
Podcasts and audio books which have revolutionized my studio environment
Stripes
Any other nuggets you'd like to share?
I love working with clients and designers to create unique experiences for any space in addition to my own work. I [displayed] an all new body of work at the [previous]
in Toronto. I love to share my new pieces with many art enthusiasts there.
