Wanda Ellerbeck

Born and raised in Alberta Wanda’s artistic practise has spanned a lifetime and has covered the disciplines of painting drawing and sculpture. Before her engagement with visuals arts Wanda was involved with dance and performing arts. She operated a decorative concrete business for sixteen years and was an industry leader in this sector in Western Canada.

As well as a Canadian wide exhibition record Wanda has taught extensively in post secondary institutions in Halifax, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver. Her awards include the prestigious Canada Council for the Arts “B” grant and numerous project grants from The Alberta Foundation for the Arts. She graduated from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design with her Masters Degree in Fine Arts.

Wanda lives teaches and works in Canmore, Alberta where she is actively engaged with various art community groups and projects. She has organized exhibitions of Stoney First Nations artists “ Marking Vision” 2014 . She has engaged in many activities including a long career in art instruction and volunteering for community projects.

ARTIST’S STATEMENT
I am a visual artist working across the disciplines of sculpture, painting and photography. My practice is grounded in the impulse to connect with my self and my world. Deeply and gratefully inspired by nature I seek to uncover a meaning and understanding of what I dont consiously know about myself in relation to my world and experience. I work with materials that carry a poetic resonance with me and am presently interested in the juxtaposition of the fragility, strength and mutability of memory and sense of place. These thoughts embody the shifting atmosphere of nature and life and reveal themselves through my process of making.

I work with abstraction and the physical act of painting to find and translate an intuitive reflection connecting me to how I perceive the natural world through my own histories and responses. Topographic references to landscape open on to a metaphoric stance creating a space of interaction between the landscape, myself, the painting and the viewer. I am curious as to how I embody and carry experiences that are triggered by the act of painting as a means not to interpret nature but to find my place in relation to it. Sometimes it is difficult to tell where I end and nature begins.

This relationship is personal and collective and I find myself with more questions than answers.