FIONA ACKERMAN IS EVERYWHERE

Fiona Ackerman has been a very busy busy painter these past few months, with two exhibitions coming up, one at Winsor Gallery in February and another one in Calgary in March/April, is also releasing a whole new body of work into the Canadian art scene, we are very excited to be showing a continuation of her last show here at the gallery Heterotopia. Her new show entitled It's not me, it's you explores the world of the artists studio through another artists keen eye. More on this will be coming soon, but before we get ahead of ourselves, let's highlight two other great things that she has been up to. 


Firstly, Ackerman has been featured in this book titled Creative Block by one of our favourite art truth seekers the Jealous Curator. It surveys a selection of advice and projects from 50 different artist to help people uncover their new ideas waiting to be hatched. Fiona will have a lot of great advice, listening to her talk about her creative impulses is like watching an artist paint, or a singer enchant, Ackerman is a great painter, and is also incredibly well-spoken. 

If you are interested in learning more about Fiona, but can't wait till your copy of the book arrives in the mail, (we know you just ordered it!) you can always read this great interview by Alex Stursberg via Sad Mag.

Tempted to click aren't you...here is more temptation... an excerpt from the interview:

SM: When did you really start to iden­tify as a painter?
FA: Prob­a­bly when I was about 18. My father lives in Ger­many, and I didn’t know him grow­ing up, and I was invited to go to one of his sum­mer school courses that he teaches. And there my eyes were really opened to paint­ing. He said right at the begin­ning, “we’re not here to make pic­tures, we’re here to learn a few fun­da­men­tal things about paint­ing” and under­stand­ing the struc­tures and how to put together a paint­ing really caught my atten­tion. So I came back after that and decided to begin paint­ing. Well it just pre­sented itself. I started tread­ing water and have been doing it ever since.
It takes a long time. It’s like learn­ing an instru­ment. It takes a long time to get to know your­self or at least get to the point where you can at least play with enough ease that you don’t have to think about it all the time when you’re doing it. I think that’s one of the gifts that my father gave me with these classes. He said, “ten years you have to paint for”. I didn’t even think about hav­ing a paint­ing career for years. I just worked my jobs, paid for my sup­plies, and didn’t worry about where I was get­ting. When I grad­u­ated from art school I just put my head down. I went under­ground. And I think men­tally know­ing that I had a jour­ney to go through before I could start to have any sem­blance of con­fi­dence was lib­er­at­ing in a way.

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