Featured Artist
Carol Auld’s creative explosion began by studying and working at Atelier Pochinko, with the late Richard Pochinko. After that, she studied at the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto, Ontario, where she graduated with a Double Major in Intermedia/New Media. She subsequently completed a Masters of Media Arts at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec. Auld has exhibited her work in Canada, the US, and internationally. In 2015, she was an Artist-in-Residence at the Starry Nights Residence in Truth of Consequences, New Mexico. In 2020, she moved to beautiful Victoria, BC, where she is engaged in a variety of creative endeavours while in lockdown due to COVID19.
Auld creates compelling and vibrant visual images to attract attention from an emotional viewpoint, rather than just a scientific or intellectual one. Her work combines elements of dream states, abstract expressionism, surrealism, feminism, and graphic art, and is infused with psychological, spiritual, and sexual content. Her feeling for texture, colour, line, and form create pieces that vibrate with energy.
Follow her @carolauld13 or find her at https://www.gallea.ca/en/artists/carol-auld
JUXTAPOSITIONS
ART IN A TIME OF COVID19
IMAGINING
REFLEXIVITY
BREAKTHROUGH 2
LAYERING
SPRING IS HERE
VIVID
AWAKENING
BREAKTHROUGH 1
FEATURED ARTIST INTERVEW
ANGLES: Hi Carol! We are so excited to feature your artwork in this issue of ANGLES. This has been a challenging year for everyone, and that includes creative people. Can you describe how the pandemic influenced your creative practice?
CAROL AULD: The pandemic influenced my practice and enabled me to develop a completely new technique. Since we were in lockdown, but allowed to still visit parks and gardens, I was using the time to create abstract pieces with paint on canvas inside and then combine them digitally with photographs from outside.
ANGLES: These images are so vivid and beautiful, and our editors selected these works because we feel they are surprising for a response to COVID-19. To that point, you titled this collection art during COVID; how do you see your experience of the pandemic emerging in the formal choices you made within these works?
CA: For me, in some ways the pandemic didn’t impact me significantly because I’m an introvert. Of course, I hated (and still hate) the travel restrictions and lockdowns, but having only recently moved to Victoria, BC, which has a sub-mediterranean climate, we have always been allowed to go outside to the parks, to walk beside the ocean or to go hiking. That’s been the saving grace of this time period for me, to explore these new areas, taking my iPhone with me. Everywhere there are landscapes of great visual interest. Victoria is also a city of gardens and I’ve been able to research, explore and investigate the many different types of flora and fauna here; many plants and trees that I have never seen before.
ANGLES: You mention in your bio that you have experience working on community-based creative projects. What has been your favorite one so far?
CA: I think the most fulfilling project I worked on was with Somali refugees in Toronto. It was my honour to be invited into the community to develop, at different times, web-based projects involving Somalian history and culture. I learned a lot about the community and their own unique culture — particularly the music and poetry.
ANGLES: We loves to support and encourage young and emerging writers and artists; are there any “best practices” you can share that have helped you in your process? Any tips for how to establish a creative routine and stick with it, even through challenging times?
CA: Keep a daily journal and a scrapbook of ideas….the journal can help you collect images and feelings from your dreams; the scrapbook can be anything…colours, textures, images, text, anything that you find interesting that could be worked into a piece or a series.
ANGLES: Let’s imagine you could create anything for your next project–with no budgetary restrictions (a dream, right?!) What would you make?
CA: What I really want to do are large-scale backlit projection boxes. A number of these images would be perfect for this.