CALGARY, AB | Born in 1965 as the youngest of six children, Connie was raised on a farm in southwestern Ontario. It was a fairly idyllic childhood filled with lots of unsupervised exploring and evenings spent with her siblings drawing at the kitchen table. Connie started her professional art career with a move to the west coast in 1987. After exploring many materials, she fell in love with acrylic painting and has been working in the medium ever since. During this time, she also worked as a news videographer, and started creating sculpture, joining the Vancouver Island Sculptures Guild. Connie began showing her work professionally in 1997, and has been consistently represented by a number of galleries since that time.
In 2000, Connie moved to Alberta and was able to devote more time to creating art. She has also spent time working in film and threatre, building props and sets. The influence of her video editing career showed up in her painting around this time, with her style taking on the look of broken up digital imagery. Since then, her artwork has appeared many times on television, in magazines and books.
While continuing to paint, Connie studied bronze casting in Mexico, but fell in love again when she discovered glass kiln casting in 2005. She found the same subtle translucency of color that she enjoyed with acrylic paint was possible in a three dimensional medium. Since then, she has been experimenting with pairing contrasting materials in sculpture, working with glass, concrete, plaster, metal and most recently, resin.
In 2018, Connie began sharing her painting skills through weekly classes and workshops and she continues to develop her multi-disciplinary practice, adding mixed media into her acrylic paintings while also devoting equal time to discovering the possibilities in sculpture. In 2021 she started sharing her work as NFT's. Connie currently works out of her home studio in Calgary.
Meet the Artist
About Connie's Modern Relics
My modern relics start as sculpted clay from which I make a mould. Woodland animals seemed like a good choice of subject because they are part of our world that we can all relate to. I use resin to cast these little treasures so that I can encapsulate interesting elements that inspire the viewer to peer in. A plaster and paper mix creates the amorphous shape inside but I add a quartz crystal for just a little touch of alchemy, to gather the viewers' positive emotional energy and release it back later when the sculpture finds a home. One of the parts I like the most about my little sculptures is the metal powder incorporated into the face of the creature. It's called cold cast metal when it's added to resin. I use bronze, copper and other metal powders, and love the way it polishes to a metallic finish that contrasts so well with the clear, colourful resin. I hope you enjoy them!
