Opening Dec 4, 2019 WIA@1313 in Window Box Gallery, Gallery 1313, 1313 Queen Street West, Toronto.
Divided
by Natalie Piper
by Natalie Piper
This wood mounted digital print is from a mixed media collage that
I recently created showing the circulation system of the human body divided
into 3 parts.
Born with a congenital heart defect meant several major surgeries
were needed throughout my life; I look to examine how times of trauma especially
in childhood can alter an individual. At age 12, I was given Hep C through a
blood transfusion. Surgery has changed me physically for both better and worse,
and mentally I had to come to understand that my body would never just be mine,
it has been opened and changed by others and will always need intervention. My
relationship with my own physical form is part fear, part awe and pride and
dislike. I am very scarred, and each scar tells of an instance I would have to
re-think my physical being. Each trauma forced change in my understanding of
what it is to be able bodied.
Natalie Piper graduated from the Ontario College of Art
and was instrumental, as committee member, in assisting its shift to a
university. She also holds a master’s degree in Printmaking from Maidstone,
Kent and taught for years at the institution in printmaking, bookbinding and
life drawing. Natalie was the first woman digital illustrator for Getty Images
in Camden, London and went on to start her own company Art Division, a web and
graphic design company in Wimbledon, UK. As a visual artist, she creates in
digital new media and, after years of a successful design career in the UK, she
has returned to Canada and to developing her art practice. She continues to
work as a graphic designer in Inkfly,
her own Canadian company.