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Amber Albrecht whiled away an idle youth on Canada's west coast, in and around the city of White Rock. She did not acquire any fishing or whaling skills. Following some world travel she settled in Montreal, where she studied Studio Art at Concordia University. She completed her BFA in 2005. She currently lives in Montreal where she works as an artist and illustrator.
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| Le moutonnement des haies | |
| C'est en moi que je l'ai | |
| -Jean Wahl, poème, p.46 | |
| (The frothing of the hedges/ I keep deep inside me .") |
My artistic practice, rooted in the neo-romantic trajectory of drawing, is fundamentally escapist. As the descendent of several generations of atheistic Canadiens, I did not grow up in a milieu of traditional culture but instead learnt an appreciation of literature and the natural environment. As a result, I'm heavily inspired by the folklore of many other cultures, as well as literature, natural history, topography and the environment. In prints and drawings I portray dream-fueled absurdist situations, which often draw heavily on my cloudy recollection of the storybooks of my childhood, saturated as they were with strange creatures, impossible happenings and oneiric landscapes. These stories created for me a very idiosynchratic conception of a past-that-never-was, and much of my work is directed toward bringing this past into being. In addition, my use of female iconography and of female-associated source material such as lace, ornamentation, and organic material, is a means to investigate themes of passivity and femininity, loss and loneliness, and being at odds with the world.