_Bio Lorraine Simms has exhibited her work across Canada and in the United States. Her paintings and drawings have been presented in institutional exhibitions, including at the Canadian Museum of Nature (Ottawa), the Redpath Museum (Montreal), the Beaty Museum of Biodiversity (Vancouver), the Illingworth Kerr Gallery (Calgary) and the Beaverbrook Art Gallery (Frederiction). She has participated in noteworthy residencies, including at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (2017), and been granted privileged access to the private collections of the American Museum of Natural History in New York (2018, 2019), where her current drawing series Shadowland began. In 2023, she was invited to pursue her drawing research at both the Canadian Museum of Nature and the Redpath Museum. She holds an AOCA from the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto and an MFA from Concordia University in Montreal. Lorraine Simms is based in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal.
_Approach Lorraine Simms' practice is rooted in contemporary reflections on nature. Animal forms have appeared in her paintings, drawings and sculptures for over thirty years. Her works explore our relationship with nature by examining how animals are perceived and represented in our society. These works draw on a range of representative pictorial traditions, from still life to scientific illustration, to question hidden ideas.
_Project Lorraine Simms' project consists of new drawings based on her previous research at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa and the Redpath Museum in Montreal. Borrowing from these collections of bones and skins of endangered and extinct species, the artist meticulously draws projected shadows of these specimens. Precisely crafted, these spirit-images offer an unexpected and surprising representation of the natural world. Superimposed on one another, these shadows create a sensation of subtle movement that evokes the spirit, or ghost, of each animal. As direct transcriptions, these drawings maintain an indelible link with the material world. This indicial relationship allows us to consider these works as testimonies to the disappearance of both an individual animal and its species. With these works, she proposes alternative approaches to knowledge based on reverence, empathy and connection.
Photo credits : Michael Smith
