Victoria-based artist Phyllis Serota’s artwork explores memory, reality and the passage of time. She examines how personal and collective memories evolve, distort and obscure over time and space, often resulting in work full of sensitively rendered figures and subtle colour palettes. She works in oil, acrylic, watercolour and monotype.
Serota was born to Jewish parents in Chicago just months before the Kristallnacht in 1938. This event, along with her experience growing up in a family that kept silent about their own personal histories and the Holocaust, would deeply influence her artistic vision later in life. She has been a full-time professional artist since 1979 and holds a BFA from the University of Victoria, where she graduated that same year. Her works have been exhibited widely in Western Canada and the United States, including at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, the University of Victoria, and galleries in Kelowna, Edmonton, Seattle, Portland and California. Her work is included in numerous public collections, including the Canadian Museum of Civilization and the Province of British Columbia. In 2011, she published Painting My Life: A Memoir of Love, Art, and Transformation, a reflection on her life’s journey as an artist.
“In my painting, I discover and explore both my reality and my memories. I realize that I am not only remembering specific moments but in some of my recent paintings, interpreting the act of memory itself. I am interested in what the distance of time and space can do to distort and obscure the images.” Quote from Artist Biography, Suddenly Dance Theatre, “The Dance by Phyllis Serota”, https://www.suddenlydance.ca/product-page/the-dance-by-phyllis-serota
Shall we do a deep dive?
Artist’s Website: phyllisserota.net
Artist’s Memoir: Painting My Life – A Memoir of Love, Art and Transformation
The Canadian Art Preservation Foundation posts short biographies and information on artists and artwork from its permanent collection in a not-so-subtle attempt to capture your attention and interest in our mission, but we also just want to keep this artwork in view. We are excited about the art we collect and want to share it with you. CAPF is a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving the artwork of Canada’s superstar artists for future generations to examine, study and exhibit – the ones you know and the ones you might not know so well. We accept artwork, journals, notes, letters, exhibition catalogues and anything else that might comprise a visual and/or intellectual “portrait” (ahem, please pardon the pun) of a particular artist.
View more artwork from our Permanent Collection and if you’d like, Donate Here.
We archive, preserve and promote Canadian art.
