Today we’d like to introduce you to Fiona Ackerman.
Hi Fiona, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I grew up in Montreal Canada an only child with my mom, a single mother who ran a theatre company and wrote novels. When I was a teenager, I met my father who is a German painter in Berlin. I was always really into art an music, so meeting my father really helped shape my life. I got to know him over a 20-year-long painting mentorship. My german is still garbage. I moved to Vancouver to finish University, got married, and we have a son. I’ve been working as a painter for over 2o years, primarily working on exhibitions for galleries both local and international. In recent years, I’ve had the amazing opportunity to do a few huge murals, which I loved, the scale, being outside, being alone on a boom lift. I’ve also been playing and writing a lot of music, alone into my computer, with my band KCAR and several other collaborative projects that took root over the pandemic.
Right now I’m working on a new series of paintings for my next solo show, “Automatic Yes” at Herringer Kiss Gallery. I’m feeling incredibly open to the unknown.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
The usual obstacles for an artist born without a silver spoon.. time, money, access to connections. But giving up has never been an option for me, being a painter is too woven into my self-identity. I’ve had the support and encouragement from clients, peers, friends and family to carry me along. The biggest challenge is maintaining the courage to trust, to just hold the faith that what you need to continue will come.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I’m a painter. I work in series, and my painting style has changed over the years to suit whatever idea wormhole I’ve fallen into. While the work is overwhelmingly abstract, I took a trip into realism with an extensive series of surrealist oil paintings of my, and other artists’ studios. Later I did a deep exploration of historical botanical art, bringing the old vintage style into my own contemporary painting language. I usually paint without a plan. Often I start on the floor, pouring paint, making marks, and letting one thing lead to the next.
The last few years, having been given a pandemic full of free time, I got really into video work. Whether editing together real-life footage for a music video or animating a totally abstract video piece, I’m really interested in how painting composition works when it has a duration, Paintings are more or less read all at once. They are like ‘a place to go’. I’ve been loving exploring what happens when a painting has an added time component. How does it change by being given a beginning, and an end? A life span.
How do you think about luck?
Luck plays a pretty major role, though I recognize that some luck requires of a privilege pre-requisite. I’ve had lots of luck, so much so that I count on it now. I’ve tried (and succeeded) at making a lot of things happen for myself, but some of the biggest steps have just felt like good luck. The thing with luck though, is that you have to look for it. You can miss it if you don’t recognize it. Luck will just walk right by. You have to pay attention and grab it.
Pricing:
- $500-$15,000
Contact Info:
- Website: fionaackerman.com
- Instagram: @ackermanfiona
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXTNIPI8zPQbQcc1AQ4aCeg
Image Credits
Jenni Lee, Alan Fidelis
