GILLIAN TOLIVER
Gillian Toliver is a multidisciplinary artist currently based in Toronto. Recently graduated from OCAD University in Drawing and Painting, Toliver’s thesis work, Paper Skin Makes Me, Waver in the Breeze was awarded the Drawing and Painting Medal for 2019. As an artist of mixed Scottish and Caribbean decent, her work often explores spaces existing in an in-between – a world caught in a moment of creation. In an honoring and opening of self, her work is a reaction to the absurdity, multiplicity and fluidity of being.
Gillian’s latest works are basswood sculptures finished in a traditional Japanese Shou Sugi Ban style – a striking method of preserving wood by charring it with fire. These works are from a series called Animalcules – a name describing a minute, usually microscopic, organism. The works are inspired by a series of folkloric tales from the Caribbean – which share similar stories with indigenous cultures around the world – giving the beings that inhabit the works a transglobal feel.
“I paint. I paint forms over and over. I paint as I would wash the floor, without thought or hesitation. I study these painted forms and then draw them out as I would brush my hair, stroke by stroke. In doing this I am in a cycle of creating objects of self, continuously deconstructing, expanding and re-growing.”
– Gillian Toliver
