Photo: Courtesy of the Artist
Calgary artist Teresa Posyniak brings to her art a versatile professional training that includes degrees in literature and drama, a BFA in printmaking and painting and an MFA in sculpture. Over the course of her 40 year career, she has worked in materials as diverse as steel, wood, concrete, handmade felt and paper, oil, encaustic and other media. Her work, ranging in size from room-sized installations to intimate paintings inspired by her life-long activism, primarily on behalf of women, children and the environment. Most notable is her public sculpture, Lest We Forget: a memorial to missing and murdered Canadian women, installed in 1994 at The Law School at the University of Calgary, one of Canada’s first memorials of this nature. Some of her figurative paintings have been used as cover images for books about domestic violence research. Her more recent forays into environmental themes have resulted in work related to our planet’s oxygen producers, plankton and trees, all threatened by human activity.
A former instructor at the University of Calgary and the Alberta University for the Arts, Posyniak has also exhibited her work widely in public and private galleries including a 2010 solo show at the Glenbow Museum, I Speak My Daughter Tongue. Posyniak is the recipient of numerous awards and grants from the Alberta and Saskatchewan governments as well as The Canada Council and her work is represented in many private and public collections.