ARTIST STATEMENT AND BIOGRAPHY, (DECEMBER 2022)
Image of me visiting: Jónsi, Hrafntinna (Obsidian), 2021 at The AGO
ARTIST STATEMENT
Michelle Forsyth is a Canadian multidisciplinary artist, her work includes diverse practices such as: painting, sculpture, printmaking, weaving, performance, photography, and writing. With a BFA from the University of Victoria and an MFA from Rutgers University, she is represented by Corkin Gallery and currently holds a tenured position at OCAD University in Toronto. Forsyth’s recent creative output interweaves themes of repetition and domestic labour, often drawing on clothing and personal objects for inspiration. The precursor to this work was an examination of the plaid patterns of her then-husband’s shirts. She reverse engineered them by weaving their patters back into cloth, exploring the interplay between mass-produced design and intimate, hand made cloth. Her series, Small Plaids grew from the work made in Letters to Kevin, and comprises of five‑inch watercolour studies that reinterpret commercial textile motifs through fluid brushwork, pooled pigment, and visible gesture.
Following her diagnosis with young-onset Parkinson’s disease over a decade ago, Forsyth deepened her investigation of how the body’s physical shifts and informs the process of creation as well as her personal relationship with her own clothing over time, in these works, entitled Footnotes, the artist used photography to turn the camera towards her own clothing clothing as her marriage started to dissolve. Turning to her own clothing as inspiration to explore the limitations of her newly disabled disabled body; these works depict her now unusable clothing, bundled against various coloured backgrounds. Forsyth then used photography to document performances that depict the her own body within patterned environments reflective of her changing relationship to her home and objects close to her. This series of work comprised of a suite of large-format, self‑portraits where she performs wrapped in patterned garments of her own making. posed against matching painted backdrops. Through screen‑printing and fabric construction, she transforms her body into both subject and camouflage, appearing and disappearing within her own designs. These photographs document her physical engagement with handmade objects, presenting her movements, gestures, and body‑language as layered with intention and intimacy. A standout work—Improvisation 3: Herringbone Jacket 1 (2021)—features Forsyth obscuring her head with a patterned textile while her hands emerge holding the piece, foregrounding her embodied relationship with the hand constructed garment. The repetition of herringbone in jacket and backdrop echoes themes of movement, identity, and transformation, while subtle imperfections in stitching and paint reveal hand‑made marks and the artist’s lived presence. Another highlight from this series—Improvisation 5: Cloud Head 1 (2022)—which continues the series into more sculptural and atmospheric forms of wrapped portraits and exploring how pattern and identity shift through performance and concealment.
BIOGRAPHY
I hold an MFA from Rutgers University (New Brunswick, NJ); and a BFA from the University of Victoria (Victoria, BC). My work has been exhibited internationally at venues including: Corkin Gallery (Toronto, ON); Mulherin + Pollard, (New York, NY); Zaum Projects (Lisbon, Portugal); The BRIC Arts Media House (Brooklyn, NY); Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar (Doha, Qatar); Pentimenti Gallery (Philadelphia, PA); Auxiliary Projects (Brooklyn, NY); The Hunterdon Museum of Art (Clinton, NJ); The Luminary Center for the Arts (St. Louis, MO); The Charleston Heights Arts Center (Las Vegas, NV); Deluge Contemporary Art (Victoria, BC); and Mercer Union (Toronto, ON). I have been the recipient of grants from the Canada Council for the Arts (Ottawa, ON), Artist Trust (Seattle, WA). My work in print has been supported by awards from the Larry Sommers Memorial Fellowship (Seattle Print Arts, WA) and the Nick Novak Fellowship (Open Studio, Toronto, ON). I have been a resident at the Frans Masereel Centrum (Kasterlee, Belgium), The Banff Centre (Banff AB), The Textile Centre (Blöndos, Iceland), and The University of Southern Maine (Gorham, ME). I currently hold a tenured position at OCAD University (Toronto, ON) and am represented by Corkin Gallery (Toronto, ON).