Elizabeth Forrest

A graduate in printmaking from the Ontario College of Art and Design, Elizabeth Forrest later travelled to Kyoto, Japan (the 90’s) to learn traditional Japanese woodblock print aka “mokuhanga”, a medium which she has continued to practice and develop in her work to the present. Also drawn to mixed media, she has combined mokuhanga with silk screen and recently, with pochoir/stencilling. Her artistic pursuits include behind the scenes work in "shodo" or Japanese calligraphy, and life drawing with attention to digital drawing on the Ipad.

Elizabeth has an extensive exhibition record including an number of solo and group shows with printmaking facility, Open Studio, Toronto. She joined membership gallery Gerrard Art Space in 2015 and held four solo shows there while participating in various group exhibitions abroad and locally. Over her career she’s been awarded three Canada council grants for work, travel and curatorial projects. Her work can be found in significant corporate collections such as National Bank, RBC and BMO.

Moving to Waterloo in 2018 allowed her to rent affordable studio space, enjoy a more rural lifestyle and dig into the local artscene. In 2022 her design was selected for a public art installation at two parks in Waterloo, Ontario (Hemlock Park and Sunview Park) The extensive park development designed by landscape architect Nick Minigan of Guelph, is still under construction.

Elizabeth’s work is characterized by observation of social behaviours (recently), natural and cultural phenomena as seen in works related to travels to Newfoundland, and earlier in the 00's, non representational works (Grid series). In other words she works serially through a variety of image approaches. A constant in her work has been the use of Japanese papers or "washi", which she loves for its adaptability to a variety of media, in particular mokuhanga. Hence most of her work consists of works on paper. These are framed by "floating" them in an airy box frame which renders them as objects and respects the life in paper itself. Unfortunately this is hard to see in digital images and can best be appreciated when viewed in person.

Over the years, Elizabeth has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions at Toronto’s Open Studio print facility, more recently in the Kitchener Waterloo area, as well as many internationally based shows notably in Japan, and the USA. For more details please see her website, www.elizabethforrest.ca and elizabethforrest.imprimo.ca