Yuli Wang-Kao

About Artist:

Canadian artist Martha Varcoe Sturdy was born in Vancouver, British Columbia in 1942. Martha Varcoe Sturdy received her BFA at the Vancouver School of Art, now Emily Carr University of Art + Design. Martha Varcoe Sturdy was later granted an Honorary Doctor of Letters from that same school in 2006.

Since her emergence in the 1980s, Martha Varcoe Sturdy has blended the concerns and methods of conceptual sculpture with those of Suprematism forming her own language within the realms of art and design.

Her work explores minimalist aesthetics, as a way of replicating the ephemeral experience of the untouched outdoors.

By continuously simplifying and maintaining a dominant scale, for Martha Varcoe Sturdy, her work is not for thinking about a specific environment, it's about being witness to the emotive impact of nature's balanced composition.

It has been said that the art of Martha Varcoe Sturdy re-evaluates the oldest subject in art landscape; specifically nature's ability to lure emotion and arts attempt to witness it. By pairing down to the most basic shapes, I ask if we can truly intellectualize the profound simplicity of our natural environment.

Her work encompasses wall, standing steel, salvaged wood and wearable sculpture. Her work is collected locally and internationally and has been featured in American, Italian and French Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, Espana and Architectural Digest.

The art created by Martha Varcoe Sturdy has remained focused on natural monumentality and balanced composition.

In 2002 Martha Varcoe Sturdy was presented with a Golden Jubilee Award by the Governor General for her achievements internationally as a Canadian artist. In 2005, she was inducted into the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts (RCA). Martha Varcoe Sturdy was commissioned for a permanent installation in Vancouver's Olympic Village (2010); and a permanent installation in the heart of downtown Tokyo, Japan (2012).