Carol Purdy has been an artist most of her life. Originally from Montréal, daughter to a prominent photojournalist, Carol has always viewed her landscape with an artist’s eye. Carol pursued visual arts in Montreal and Ottawa — first as a photographer, and later, achieving a Diploma in Printmaking from the Ottawa School of Art in 1994.
Her art explores the substance, texture and numina of Canadian coastal shorelines – organic forms and spaces, in their transitional state, shaped by elemental forces, clearly dominate her work. Her interpretations of the land’s physical and numinous transformations strongly reflect her own sublimated response to what is recorded in these liminal spaces.
For inspiration, she wanders the thresholds between land, sky and sea, and documents what she experiences. Stone, shell, whalebone and lichen are all media which record the ongoing transformation of natural space. These visual records become the textural language in which her work is expressed.
These impressed works are nuanced and complex, consisting of multiple impressions, assemblages, over-painting, and text inclusions in addition to traditional printmaking techniques in order to convey the essential nature of her subject. This work is true mixed-media.
“My work captures the transitional vestiges experienced in a given moment in a given place; the colours, textures, and ever-changing forms being revealed and transformed by the hand of nature. I am inspired by that fleeting, ephemeral, state of momentary permanence and impress it as it is personally experienced.”