BIO

Xanthe Isbister is a visual artist and contemporary art curator living in Medicine Hat, Alberta. Born and raised in Winnipeg, she received her BFA from the University of Manitoba and her MFA from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Since 2005 she has exhibited nationally and internationally, including the 2015 NCECA conference in Providence, RI and the Gardiner Museum in Toronto, Ontario. She is a recipient of various awards including the Lila Acheson Wallace Readers Digest Scholarship and an RBC Emerging Artist Peoples Choice Nominee. Xanthe has presented numerous public lectures on her work, and attended national and international residencies including The Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and the Zentrum Fur Keramik Berlin.

Rooted in abstract expressionist traditions, I work instinctively and spontaneously with an intended outcome of symbolic meaning rather than literal representations. In recent years, I have experienced immense life changes. These changes sparked a flood of memories that have inspired my current body of work. Aesthetically influenced by positive memories of time spent in the remote wilderness, my concepts are based on trauma associated with birth, death, and disease. These concepts are metaphorically represented and manifested innately as I create; emotionally and physically enveloped, my subconscious steers the making.