Biography: Heidi Taillefer
Heidi Taillefer was born in 1970 in Montreal, Quebec, where she still lives and works. She attended weekly art classes as a child at the La Palette art school in Baie-d’Urfé, Quebec, focusing on watercolor and other various types of mediums. By the early 90’s Taillefer began working as a commercial illustrator in tandem with her fine art projects, but by 2004 she devoted her time fully to fine art, exhibiting internationally in both gallery and museum venues.
Her paintings often depict subjects comprised of seemingly incongruous objects characterized as symbolic, which form a complex composite of elements and add a contemporary spin to often classical icons. Taillefer’s work highlights our growing hybridization with technology, in which she depicts “machine-like” constructions. Her approach is to infuse primordial aspects of the human condition into these hybridized humans and animals, and seeks to remind the viewer of the inescapable nature of our being despite our increasing merger with technology.
Taillefer’s work is consonant with early 20th century surrealists such as Max Ernst, Paul Delvaux, and Giorgio de Chirico. It is an original creative fusion of classical figurative painting, surrealism, contemporary realism, and mythology combined with popular figurative traditions ranging from Victorian romanticism to science fiction.
