Bio

I was born in San Francisco and as far back as I can remember the desire to create art has always played a roll in my life. I began taking courses out of high school at a junior college in Marin County, California. Later I enrolled at the Academy of Art in San Francisco majoring in Fine Arts. The dream of becoming an artist was put on hold when I moved to Hawaii but still I continued with courses.

I moved to Vancouver in 1980 where my focus turned to establishing a career. I had been taking a few courses at Langara but it wasn't until I took the "Masters Painting Techniques" course offered through Emily Carr in Florence Italy that my desire to paint began to change my life. I needed to do something much more creative and so in 1995 I decided to close my Fashion Agency of 18 years to pursue a career in Interior Design which I am also very passionate about. When I got home from Italy I decided to paint a reproduction of Michelangelo's "Cybil and the Book of Knowledge". It was an ambitions piece in oils on a 36X48 canvas. It took a month painting part-time to complete it and I was amazed that I had done it. It was a major breakthrough for me. I consider that painting to be my biggest teacher. Because of it I started getting commissions right from the start. The next year I enrolled at the Academy of Art in Vancouver while continuing to work on commissions.

Something about painting the masters work seemed vaguely familiar to me. Like on old memory. Over the years I have worked on commissions and sold my work privately to homes and businesses in Vancouver, Calgary, Montreal, Toronto, California and Mexico. I've shown a body of work based on Horses at The Cross retail store and for the last two years have exhibited at the East Cultural Crawl. In April of this year I exhibited a large body of work at the Canvas Gallery in Gastown. I have never painted full time but am getting in the flow of painting on a regular basis. In the last ten years I have also done a lot of design work.

I identify with the vanguard of artists who emerged in the early 1940s the likes of, Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko and Clyfford Still, to name a few. Their work stood as a reflection of the inner psyche. I value as they did the spontaneity of improvisation and the importance of process taping into the universal consciousness. Their work resisted stylistic category with emphasis on energetic gesture and the dynamic. This way of working feels authentic to me and I'm excited to explore it further.

I travel across BC for business twice a year taking photographs and exploring little towns, riverside cabins and of course all my favorite little spots. I am stunned by nature and the beauty of BC. All of which I find incredibly inspiring.

Judith Brock