Teri Donovan
Biography
Teri Donovan is a Toronto-based mixed media artist. In her work, she engages with issues of perception, memory, and identity related to societal patterns handed down from the past. With explicitly juxtaposed elements, she creates visual dialogues that serve to expose and question ongoing patterns that affect contemporary life.
Donovan holds a BFA from York University and a BEd from the University of Toronto. She studied at The Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, the Ontario College of Art and Design, and Toronto School of Art. Her work has been exhibited in Toronto and southern Ontario including at The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Latcham Art Centre, Art Gallery of Mississauga, Glenhyrst Art Gallery of Brant, the Red Head Gallery, and the Art Gallery of Peterborough.
Artist Statement
The entanglement of the past with the present and the ways in which identity and social roles are shaped by familial and cultural milieus is the focus of my work. I’m interested in how the ongoing influence of the past haunts the present and creates patterns which shape thoughts and behaviours that determine how we become who we are.
By using family and found photographs as references, I create works intended to be part of a dialogue about the patterns of influence that exist in a societal as well as familial context. Ideas concerning the repetition of entrenched social patterns are at the core of my practice and their presence in my work is meant to be a reminder that “we may be done with the past, but the past isn’t done with us.”
1 1. Simon Critchley, Tragedy, The Greeks, And Us (Pantheon Books 2019), pg.1