Introduction

Nancy Paul is a Canadian painter and drawer, occasional photographer and printmaker, who has exhibited with professional groups such as the Canadian Society of Artists and the Organization of Kingston Women Artists.  Her recent solo shows in 2020 (Time/Lines, Art Noise Gallery, Kingston) and 2018 (Dualities/Mythologies, The Rebecca Gallery, Toronto and Restoring Balance, Art Noise Gallery, Kingston) featured paintings on canvas, paper and stone tile. 

Background

Nancy was born and grew up in northwestern Ontario. She left home to study art in Toronto at the Ontario College of Art (OCA, now OCAD) but the school was not a good fit for her. She relocated to Kingston and went on to complete three degrees in English Literature at Queen’s University. Before, during, and after her graduate studies she worked at the National Cancer Institute of Canada in clinical cancer research and clinical trials methodology, as well as administration and education.

Throughout her years at Queen’s and the NCIC, Nancy considered art to be her true vocation and continued to draw and paint even as she maintained a full time career, whether as student or researcher. In fact her aesthetic of the impersonality of the artist was informed by the modernist poets she wrote about in her theses (TS Eliot, MA; Louise Bogan, PhD). Further, her subject matter was directly influenced by her work in cancer research. Breast Cancer: A Progress, a series of eight paintings exhibited at Art Noise Gallery in 1994, was dedicated to Joy, one of the patients she enrolled and followed on study at the Cancer Clinic at Kingston General Hospital.

Nancy lives in Lansdowne with her husband, Steve, and their cat, Zarco.

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Artist’s Statement

My work represents my search for understanding and hope in these times of accelerating degradation of the earth and extinction of species. Despite overwhelming evidence of crises from climate change to social injustice to pandemic, governments around the world seem paralyzed even as democracy is under threat and truth-telling stifled.  Individuals feel powerless to enact change.

The naked body is an enduring symbol of vulnerability; Shakespeare’s Lear in the storm on the heath knows unaccommodated man to be a poor, bare, forked animal.  Yet the nude in visual art can represent beauty, grace and love, an aesthetic of salvation.  We need her now more than ever.

The female nude for me is at once surrogate seeker of truth and object of scrutiny.  In my work the female figure is both self and other; she represents communication and compassion.

I use contrast and juxtaposition, repetition and sequencing, to explore the spaces between and around us and to suggest relationships. Creatures of the sea and sky are among my favourite subjects.  Times of day and night, the cycle of the seasons, provide context and perspective in my art.

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Copyright and Contact

All images are copyright the artist, 2025.r information on work availability, pricing, permissions: please email Nancy at: npaulartworks@gmail.com