BIOGRAPHY
Born in Montreal Quebec,
I Live and have a studio in the laurentian Mountains. I studied art and animation at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.
I am a graduate of Concordia University with a BFA in Fine Arts.
I hold a degree in the Digital Arts from Concordia University as well as a degree in photography from Dawson College.
I completed studio courses in Video at Studio A of Concordia university, and I hope to continue collaborative projects using animation and video. My last big collaborative project was a 35 ft mural situated in down town Belfast, Ireland where I worked with Irish painter Dee Craig as the designer of the mural called Legends of the East Side .
Artist Statement of Iris Nowa
I like to refer to myself as a cross pollination media painter, for not only do I often blur the lines between human nature, animal nature, and the natural elements, but as well I cross mediums between oil paint, photography, and digital manipulation. I have become a Mixtist, I prefer the blending of the real and the surreal, creating a new painted reality. I have developed a personal iconography over time and these symbols and subjects get reused in different ways. Having always been drawn to medieval themes of colours , decorative pageantry and symbols, there is often a common design embellishment related to this genre. Medieval objects such the sword, shields, chrystals, and decorative motif reappear across the series in my growing visual vernacular.
On one of my voyages to Asia, I visited an elephant orphanage and became smitten by the inner beauty and strength of the elephants and the protection they exhibit for each other. They have become my symbol of strength , telepathy and unity.
They were the stars of a series in my gallery called Animal Magnetism,
At the heart of all my work though, is the essential study of illumination, through colour and light. I am drawn to the supernatural visionary experience in all the mediums I work in , whether it be painting, photography, digital art or as of lately the interrelation between oil on canvas and the ether of the digital world. I am always looking for that focal light that ties to illumination and just a little bit of that divine glow.
A revelation of light ripping asunder the veil of unknowing heretofore enshrouded and unrevealed to permit the brilliance of light to illume the darkest of moments days events and bring all into the light’ … I. regardi
“It might be supposed that realism consists in copying a glass as it is on the table. In fact, one never copies anything but the vision that remains of it at each moment, the image that becomes conscious. You never copy the glass on the table; you copy the residue of the vision. Each time I look at a glass, it has an air of remaking itself. That is to say its reality becomes uncertain. One sees it as if it were disappearing, coming into view again, disappearing , coming into view again. That is to say…