Biography

Judith Berry lives and works in Montreal. She has had solo exhibitions across Canada in Montreal, Toronto, Calgary and Ottawa. Judith has also shown in numerous group exhibitions including exhibitions at the Musée du Québec and the Canada Science and Technology Museum. Her work is in various collections including: the City of Ottawa, the Musée du Québec and the Art Bank of the Canada Council. She has served as a jury member for the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and the City of Ottawa. She is represented by Galerie Art Mûr in Montreal.

Artist statement

Judith Berry’s paintings merge many genres, from portraiture and landscape to still life and abstraction. In these works, the landscape has been compressed into an object which then takes on life, animal, human or vegetal. In many paintings, the landscape becomes a kind of garment worn by the subject.

The horses, in these paintings, are warm unstable land masses to be navigated. Historically, the horse has embodied a desire for power and strength. They are animals that we have obliged to carry us into war.
Neither horses nor humans reveal their eyes in these works. The strength of their presence increases without the distancing gaze. Their surfaces become a landscape in which we can visually travel.

These embodied landscapes provoke conflicting feelings of solace and malaise. The paintings wrestle with the idea of landscape, of what we do to the environment, and the effect that this changing environment has on ourselves.