Lorraine Simms

Lorraine Simms earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts at the Ontario College of Art in 1978.{{cite web |title=Lorraine Simms Biography – Lorraine Simms on artnet |url=http://www.artnet.com/artists/lorraine-simms/biography |website=artnet |accessdate=12 December 2018}} Concordia University 1990 In 1990, she completed her Masters of Fine Arts at Concordia University. She began painting professionally in 1991.{{cite web |last1=Simms |first1=Lorraine |title=Featured Artist: Lorraine Simms |url=https://montrealserai.com/article/featured-artist-lorraine-simms/ |website=Montréal Serai |accessdate=12 December 2018}} Simms lives and works in Montréal. She previously taught at Dawson College{{cite web |title=CCCA Artist Profile for Lorraine Simms |url=http://ccca.concordia.ca/artists/Lorraine_Simms |website=Concordia University |accessdate=12 December 2018}} and Concordia University.{{Cite web|title=FEATURED ARTIST: LORRAINE SIMMS|url=https://montrealserai.com/article/featured-artist-lorraine-simms/|access-date=2021-12-21|website=Montréal Serai|language=en-US}}

Her work has been exhibited in galleries, cultural institutions, and museums in Canada and the United States, including the Canadian Museum of Nature,{{Cite web|last1=Nature|first1=© Canadian Museum of|last2=Update: 2021-12-17|first2=Last|last3=Conditions|first3=Terms and|last4=Map|first4=Site|title=Shadowland|url=https://nature.ca/en/plan-your-visit/what-see-do/our-exhibitions/shadowland|access-date=2021-12-21|website=Canadian Museum of Nature|language=en}} the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec,{{Cite web|title=Simms, Lorraine|url=http://collections.mnbaq.org/fr/artiste/600005382|access-date=2021-12-21|website=Collections {{!}} MNBAQ}} the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, and the Beaty Biodiversity Museum.{{Cite web|title=Documents of Collapse {{!}} Beaty Biodiversity Museum|url=https://beatymuseum.ubc.ca/exhibitions/past-exhibitions/documents-of-collapse/|access-date=2021-12-21|website=beatymuseum.ubc.ca}} Her work was the subject of a Bravo TV documentary in the Shaping Art series. Simms is the recipient of numerous grants from the Conseil des arts et des letters du Québec and the Canada Council for the Arts. Championing the work of other artists, she has curated many solo and group exhibitions that featured their works.{{Cite web|title=Visual arts: Wim Delvoye elevates the ordinary into high art|url=https://montrealgazette.com/entertainment/local-arts/visual-arts-wim-delvoye-elevates-the-ordinary-into-high-art|access-date=2021-12-27|website=montrealgazette|language=en-CA}}{{Cite web|title=Lift vs Drag {{!}} Paul Litherland|url=https://paullitherland.com/lift-vs-drag/|access-date=2021-12-27|language=en-US}}

Simms' practice is expressed in painting, painting installations, drawing and assemblages. She works in thematic series that are linked formally and conceptually. Her works aim to strike a balance between the observable and the implied, while exploring the fugitive nature of representation. For the past decade Simms has developed several series that feature animal forms – plush, taxidermy and bones – in paintings, drawings and sculpture.{{Cite web|title=Work|url=http://www.lorrainesimms.com/work|access-date=2021-12-27|website=Lorraine Simms|language=en-CA}} Her most recent works, as described by James Campbell in White Hot Magazine of Contemporary Art, are "interrogatory and invitingly ambiguous.”{{Cite web|title=Lorraine Simms' "Phantom" at Galerie Deux Poissons|url=https://whitehotmagazine.com/articles/phantom-at-galerie-deux-poissons/4250|access-date=2021-12-29|website=Whitehot Magazine of Contemporary Art|language=en}}

Working with the bones and skins of animals considered vulnerable or endangered, Simms developed a large drawing series entitled Shadowland.{{Cite web|title=«Phantom»: espèces menacées|url=https://www.ledevoir.com/culture/arts-visuels/554042/phantom-especes-menacees|access-date=2021-12-27|website=Le Devoir|date=11 May 2019 |language=fr}} These drawings were researched in the Mammalogy Department at the American Museum of Natural History in New York during two residencies (2018, 2019).{{Citation|last=Simms|first=Lorraine|title=Lorraine Simms: Shadowland|date=2020-10-21|url=https://vimeo.com/470591132|access-date=2021-12-27}} These drawings explore the intricate shadows cast by animal skulls and bones{{Cite web|date=2021-12-13|title=Ghostly exhibit at Canadian Museum of Nature explores shadow of extinction hanging over vulnerable species|url=https://capitalcurrent.ca/ghostly-exhibit-at-canadian-museum-of-nature-explores-shadow-of-extinction-hanging-over-vulnerable-species/|access-date=2021-12-27|website=Capital Current|language=en-CA}} and offer a reflective space to consider the spiritual dimension of animals, our intertwined histories and future evolution.{{Cite web|title=Exhibit at Ottawa's museum of nature finds art in the shadows of endangered animals|url=https://ottawacitizen.com/entertainment/exhibit-at-ottawas-museum-of-nature-finds-art-in-the-shadows-of-endangered-animals|access-date=2021-12-27|website=ottawacitizen|language=en-CA}} James Campbell in White Hot Magazine of Contemporary Art wrote: “In these drawings, harvested shadows make the dead animals that cast them live again, with otherworldly feral grace. This is no exercise in enervating nostalgia, but a demonstration of daunting draughtsmanship”.{{Cite web|title=Lorraine Simms' "Phantom" at Galerie Deux Poissons|url=https://whitehotmagazine.com/articles/phantom-at-galerie-deux-poissons/4250|access-date=2021-12-27|website=Whitehot Magazine of Contemporary Art|language=en}}

Works from this series have been featured in several exhibitions, including the Canadian Museum of Nature (2021),{{Cite web|date=2021-12-12|title=Des espèces menacées entre l'ombre et la lumière|url=https://www.ledroit.com/2021/12/12/des-especes-menacees-entre-lombre-et-la-lumiere-d368505669bb2946180f618591c7245e|access-date=2021-12-29|website=Le Droit|language=fr}}{{Cite web|date=2021-12-13|title=Ghostly exhibit at Canadian Museum of Nature explores shadow of extinction hanging over vulnerable species|url=https://capitalcurrent.ca/ghostly-exhibit-at-canadian-museum-of-nature-explores-shadow-of-extinction-hanging-over-vulnerable-species/|access-date=2021-12-27|website=Capital Current|language=en-CA}} the Illingworth Kerr Gallery{{Cite web|title=The Distance Between {{!}} Alberta University of the Arts|url=https://auarts.ca/exhibition/the-distance-between|access-date=2022-01-24|website=auarts.ca|language=en}} in Calgary (2022), the Beaty Biodiversity Museum (2019),{{Cite web|title=Documents of Collapse {{!}} Beaty Biodiversity Museum|url=https://beatymuseum.ubc.ca/exhibitions/past-exhibitions/documents-of-collapse/|access-date=2021-12-27|website=beatymuseum.ubc.ca}} McBride Contemporary in Montreal (2019){{Cite web|title=Lorraine Simms|url=https://mcbridecontemporain.com/artists/62-lorraine-simms/|access-date=2021-12-27|website=McBride Contemporain|language=en}} and Super Dutchess in New York, NY (2019).{{Cite web|title=Shadow Brokers|url=https://www.belowgrandnyc.com/shadow-brokers|access-date=2021-12-27|website=Below Grand|language=en-US}}

From 2010 to 2018 Simms worked with plush, creating three distinct painting series and a number of sculptures or “assemblages”.{{Cite web|title=Work|url=http://www.lorrainesimms.com/work|access-date=2021-12-27|website=Lorraine Simms|language=en-CA}} These works consider the Disneyfication of reality portrayed by these ephemeral objects of our affections.{{Cite web|last=Tousignant|first=Isa|title=Animal Antics: Why Lorraine Simms Paints Plush|url=https://canadianart.ca/features/animal-antics-lorraine-simms/|access-date=2021-12-27|website=Canadian Art|language=en-US}} In the exhibition catalogue for Haunted By You, René Viau wrote: “Though related to kitsch and referring to a world of consumerism and big-box stores, these canvases are clearly grounded in an historical pictorial tradition. This work is distinguished as much by skillful representation, for example, the inventive virtuoso renderings of the texture of fake fur, as by the emphasis on the overall surface and paint handling.”{{Cite web|title=Haunted by You – Design Postimage inc|url=https://postimage.com/haunted-by-you/|access-date=2021-12-27|language=en-US}}

In 2010, Simms completed a large number of small paintings on paper that explore two ambiguously related subjects: details of Michael Jackson’s face from different periods of his life and close-ups of plush toys.{{Cite web|title=Work|url=http://www.lorrainesimms.com/work|access-date=2021-12-27|website=Lorraine Simms|language=en-CA}} These works were first presented in a solo exhibition, Spectral at the Anna Leonowens Gallery. In conjunction with this exhibition Simms published The Interview, an illustrated book featuring her fictional interview with Michael Jackson after his funeral.{{cite book|title=The Interview|url=http://www.blurb.com/b/1337081-the-interview|website=Blurb|date=6 May 2010 |language=en|accessdate=12 December 2018}} The book also includes manipulated digital images and a selection of paintings from Spectral.{{Cite web|title=Work|url=http://www.lorrainesimms.com/work|access-date=2021-12-29|website=Lorraine Simms|language=en-CA}}

Based on mugshots of female offenders “wanted mostly for fraud”, Simms created a series of large portraits entitled Fugitive.{{Cite web|title=Work|url=http://www.lorrainesimms.com/work|access-date=2021-12-27|website=Lorraine Simms|language=en-CA}} Other than this clue, no further information is offered.{{Cite web|title=Lorraine Simms looks at the way people try to mask who they are|url=https://www.pressreader.com/article/282252366502280|access-date=2021-12-29|via=PressReader}} In an exhibition essay about these works, Martha Langford wrote that Simms “wants them for fraud, for the perpetration of pictorial fictions in her studio. Innumerable degrees of separation are between us the spectators, and these shadowy figures. Their masks find refuge in a painter’s studio, a place where photographic claims of truth and authenticity have no place. Simms creates zones of ambiguity and in-between.”{{Cite book|last=Langford|first=Martha|url=https://e-artexte.ca/id/eprint/20420/|title=Lorraine Simms : Fugitive|date=2007|publisher=Maison de la culture Marie Uguay|others=Martha Langford|location=Montréal, Qc}}

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• {{official|http://www.lorrainesimms.com/}}
• [https://vimeo.com/470591132 Lorraine Simms: Shadowland]
• [https://collections.mnbaq.org/fr/artiste/600005382 MNBAQ Collections: Lorraine Simms]

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Category:Living people

Category:Painters from Montreal

Category:Canadian women painters

Category:OCAD University alumni

Category:Concordia University alumni

Category:Academic staff of Dawson College

Category:21st-century Canadian women artists

Category:1956 births

Category:Members of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts