Biography

Alan is an emerging photography-based artist from Vancouver. His interest in photography started from a passion for travel and a love of nature. With an education and career background in geotechnical mining engineering, he saw firsthand humanity’s awesome and awful impact on the natural landscape. After a recent career change to become a letter carrier, he soaks in diverse areas of the city by foot which provides inspiration for works based on urban landscapes and environments.

His aesthetic has been influenced by landscape photographers like Edward Burtynsky as well as the documentative and direct style of the New Objectivity movement. He enjoys exploring the relationship between our society and environment, both built and natural, and the story it tells about ourselves.

While primarily self-taught in photography, Alan has taken several courses under Langara’s Continuing Studies Photography Program and is exploring other photographic genres. He recently has been playing with photo composites to impart an extra layer into the medium.

The 2021 Vancouver Outsider Artists Festival is his first exhibition. Three series of works relating to Vancouver’s real estate market, social mobility, and consumption are presented.

Biography

Andrew Woods entered visual arts as a therapeutic outlet several years ago. Having previously worked as a writer, he wanted to develop a new art form and figured a combination of writing and visual art would be a more compelling way to express his ideas. His love of storytelling has carried him through some of the more difficult moments of life. Much of his inspiration comes from his own past experiences dealing with mental health related issues. Ultimately, his goal in sharing his work is to inspire others, to offer a different perspective on life, and to help bring people together, despite the polarities that exist in today’s world.

His belief is that through storytelling, maybe we can extend beyond ourselves and see what is ultimately true – that we are as unique as we are similar.

Biography

Beth Wilks was born Heidi Elisabeth Lowther, in the mid-sixties in Southeast Vancouver, to working-class poet activists. She started drawing regularly at age 3, inspired by frequent trips to the Gulf Islands with her parents. In response to unfolding chaos in the home, she drew with increasing intricacy and concentration, which she noticed eased tension and resulted in positive attention in otherwise volatile situations. Art then became interwoven contextually with developmental trauma as a means of literal/physical survival. Later, her grandmother, an accomplished landscape artist in oils, taught her shading and drawing from observation, but couldn’t lure her away from the pencil. For many turbulent years, Beth made art sporadically, unable to forge a specific identity or evolve creatively, due to persistent poverty and all too frequent moves. Making art to please others, she gave away most of her occasional work. Seeking new directions meant waiting for a backdrop of stability in which to create an authentic voice, a gift which eluded her until midlife.

Creature Studies, her ongoing look at the sentience of nonhuman animals through unique illustrative portraiture, began in 2013. It evolved from a lifelong fascination with animals as individual beings, allies, protectors, and characters in their own right. With this series, Beth seeks to remind the human viewer of the presence, meaning, complexity, and value of the lives of others, each embodying the pinnacle of evolution, and to evoke their remembrance in the context of global-industrial resource extraction and human-driven climate emergency.

Biography

Chuck Heilman currently lives in the DTES. Chuck has a motley set of life experiences that distinctly inform her aesthetic decisions. In art practice, she primarily works with light, colour, and line via mixed media. Chuck’s interest in light and its ability to manipulate colour, space, and mood come forward in her work with elements of spectacle, a party atmosphere, and cheekiness.

The intent of Chuck’s work is to be accessible to everyone.

Chuck is fascinated in light and how it manipulates colour, space and mood. She likes obsessive, systematic and repetitive acts. In her art practice she considers space, history and site and often works in text. She enjoys aesthetics and composition and considers her work pretty and provocative. She is interested in satire, irony and humor. There are elements of spectacle, a party atmosphere and cheekiness in her work.

Biography

Born in Edmonton, Alberta, Jacqueline Primeau is a painter and mixed media artist who identifies as Metis. She has a BFA from Concordia University in Montreal. She has shown her work at several of the Arts Councils in BC, at the Kettle Society, at the Lost and Found Café and at the Federation of Canadian Artists Gallery.

Her meditative paintings reveal her deep connection to the land. She is more interested in capturing the mood and essence of the landscapes, which inspire her, than in realistic depiction. Her abstract painting style is expressive and free. The intent of her paintings is to give the viewer a sense of calm.

She currently lives in Vancouver, BC

Right: detail image - Touching Sky

Biography

Rojina (RJ) Farrokhnejad currently lives in Vancouver, BC. She came to the city in the early 2000’s and quickly connected with the LGBT community, finding like-minded people as herself. She proudly calls this city home.

Her passions are many; however, what is most Important to her is creating works of art. RJ is a passionate artist, creating images that are both abstract and focused on the paint. Keeping figures within the frame helps provide a sense of narrative. Her most recent works push the boundaries of representation, integrating abstraction within imaginative figurative compositions. RJ wants to tell a global story of diversity, inclusion, and acceptance, in non-verbal way.

Biography

Shamsah Mohamed was born and raised in Nairobi, Kenya, before immigrating to Canada in 1974 after the Ugandan exodus. Growing up in Kenya, it was easy for Shamsah to be drawn to the local landscape; the wildlife that flourished on the savannah, as well as the varied plants that thrived along the sunny equator. After arriving in Vancouver in 1981, Shamsah’s interest in biology grew and led to them pursuing a BSc. in Biology from the University of British Columbia.

After travelling to various countries around the world and exploring Vancouver, Shamsah started to miss the older styles of architecture and began to take particular notice of the heritage buildings they encountered. This interest in historical architecture followed them on a trip to India, where they shot many photographs of the beautiful historical architecture of India.

These photographs exhibited at the Vancouver Outsider Arts Festival give the viewer a small glimpse into the vast and varied architectural styles one can find in India, not only in these monuments but even in other historical buildings around India that have survived to this day. One can only be mesmerized by the intricate hand work of the artists as well as the multi-faceted colour and design of the historical sites. Shamsah’s hope is that the viewer will be inspired to visit these and other heritage sites in India, and around the world, in order to appreciate and admire the architectural wonders created by past generations.

Left: detail of Window to Heaven