Carla Lam

I work in multiple media (especially acrylic, oil and pastel) and favor creative mark making, and letting the process inform the subject. I love heavy texture that is luscious to the eye and am particularly interested in the possibilities opened in large scale work, and the links between visual and literary creation. I continuously learn the language of paint and the elusive impulse of life in the worlds around and within us in the way I paint. The result is emotionally evocative, abstracted nature and other landscapes, though the common thread is the emotional communication rather than the subject.

My paintings prioritize intuition in that, for example, they start from photos, ideas, feelings, color or whatever I am drawn to on the day. My impressionistic, sometimes abstract, work disrupts polarization, arresting simple identification with discrete inner and outer worlds, mind and body, abstraction and realism. I left a long career in academia inspired by the need to paint, and my practice expresses an embodied creativity largely suppressed in intellectual pursuit. I see color, shape, and line as another form of communication to writing, speaking, and connecting through words.

As a Canadian who lived for a decade in New Zealand, a stable position teaching and writing political philosophy at the University of Otago was – ironically - the path to a regular painting practice. The disorienting experience of immigration to a far-flung country was the catalyst for an undeniable desire to create beyond the academic context. I’ve called Edmonton home for the past 3 and a half years, giving expression to the need for visual communication, honoring the process of change and following where painting may lead.