BIOGRAPHY

Canada, b.1961
Toronto based artist, Shelley Adler’s paintings are commanding in their painterly exuberance and stunning range of color. Using fragments of contemporary life, Adler’s psychological portraits explore gender and identity, creating a balance between interior and exterior worlds. From early cave painting to the Mona Lisa and Andy Warhol portraiture is a formidable artistic tradition. Shelley Adler’s paintings of people’s faces are not portraits in the strict sense of the word in that portraits are formulated primarily as likenesses of the sitter. In Adler’s painting, the face is a springboard to a luminous and freeform tableau. They are less about the sitter than the internal processes of the artist and her intense curiosity about people, about the ways of looking, and about the act of painting. These considerations are delicately balanced to reflect a deep humanism. With generous brushstrokes and vibrant planes of light, Adler forms the face into an elemental and iconic essence. Each painting is endowed with a particular, individual energy through color and composition. Color and its link to emotion is a primary concern and although Adler employs eccentric, non-naturalistic color, the faces have a very real quality. Like David Hockney, Adler often paints people she knows. For Hockney, capturing a subject’s likeness, and especially his or her personality, can only be properly done with the human touch, or as he says, “it has to be directed through my heart to my eye to my hand.”

Shelley Adler has exhibited throughout Canada. She has had solo shows at Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto (2006, 2009), Andrea Meislin (2008) and has participated in group exhibitions in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal, including Sarah Myerscough Fine Art, London (2008). Adler received her MFA from Boston University in 1987. She graduated from York University in Toronto in 1983 and attended Edinburgh College of Art in Scotland in 1982.

EDUCATION

1987     Master of Fine Arts, Boston University
1983     Bachelor of Fine Arts, York University, Toronto
1982     Edinburgh College of Art, Scotland

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

2016

Studies, Madison Gallery, La Jolla, California

2015

The Nude Polaroids, Two Person Show with Brent McIntosh, Galerie St-Larent Hill, Ottawa, Canada

2014

Body Language, Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto, Solo Show

2012

Four Portrayls, J. Cacciola Gallery, New York, Group show
Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto, Solo Show

2011

Eat Drink Man Woman, Art Gallery of Mississauga, Group Show
Pulp Friction, Toronto, Solo Show

2009

Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto, Solo Show

2008

2008 Blanche Volume 2: Painting, MOCCA, Toronto, Group Show
2008 The Figure, Sarah Myerscough Gallery, London England, Group Show
Andrea Meislin Gallery, New York, New York, Solo Show

2006

Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto, Solo Show
Making Room, Harbourfront, Toronto
Dyan Marie Projects, Paint Jam, Group Show

2005

Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto, Group show
Loop Gallery, Toronto, Two person show

2004

Drabinsky Gallery, Toronto, Group show

2003

State Gallery, Vancouver, Three person show
Loop Gallery, Toronto, Two person show

2002

2002 State Gallery, Vancouver, Solo show
Loop Gallery,Toronto, Two person show

2001

2001 Blackwood Gallery, University of Toronto in Mississauga, Group show

2000

2000 Gallery 418, Montreal, Group show
Loop Gallery,Toronto, Two person show

1997

Blackwood Gallery, University of Toronto in Mississauga, Group show
Meg Gallery, Toronto, Group show

1994

1994 Samual J. Zacks Gallery, York University, Toronto, Solo show
Here and Now Gallery, Toronto, Solo show
Koffler Gallery, Toronto
Canadian Painters

SELECTED AWARDS

1997

Drawing Award, Blackwood Gallery

1986

Nan Foundation Graduate Scholarship, Boston University