Monica Tap
{{short description|Canadian painter, artist and academic (born 1962)}}
{{Infobox artist
| name = Monica Tap
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| birth_name = Monica Tap
| birth_date = 1962
| birth_place = Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
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| nationality =
| field = Painter
| training = Nova Scotia College of Art and Design
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| website = {{URL|monicatap.com }}
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Monica Tap (born 1962) is a Canadian painter, artist and educator. She lives in Toronto, Ontario, and teaches at the University of Guelph. She is known for engaging and challenging conventions concerning landscape and still-life painting.Tousley, Nancy Monica Tap: Painting and Perception Monica Tap Paintings ed. Susan Harrison. Montreal: ABC Art Books Canada, 2004. 11-21 Exhibition Catalogue
Biography
Tap was born in Edmonton, Alberta.{{cite web |date=2004 |title=Monica Tap Further: Paintings by Monica Tap |url=http://saag.ca/art/exhibitions/0380-further:-paintings-by-monica-tap |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170302033130/http://saag.ca/art/exhibitions/0380-further:-paintings-by-monica-tap |archive-date=2 March 2017 |accessdate=1 March 2017 |website=Southern Alberta Art Gallery |publisher=}} She attended the Alberta College of Art, University of Alberta (1986), and NSCAD University for her BFA (1990), and MFA (1996). She studied Fine Arts with Gerald Ferguson. Tap is also a professor at the University of Guelph in the School of Fine Art and Music.{{Cite web |last=Dundas |first=Deborah |date=15 August 2020 |title=Two modes of seeing: David Milne and Emily Carr coexist in a single painting |url=https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/visualarts/2020/08/15/two-modes-of-seeing-david-milne-and-emily-carr-coexist-in-a-single-painting.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210601012314/https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/visualarts/2020/08/15/two-modes-of-seeing-david-milne-and-emily-carr-coexist-in-a-single-painting.html |archive-date=1 June 2021 |access-date=17 February 2023 |website=The Star |language=en}}{{Cite web |title=Monica Tap - Professor, Studio Art |url=https://www.uoguelph.ca/arts/sofam/people/monica-tap |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220614115447/https://www.uoguelph.ca/arts/sofam/people/monica-tap |archive-date=14 June 2022 |access-date=17 February 2023 |website=University of Guelph}}
Artistic career
Tap often uses photographs and video stills as source material for her paintings. For instance, in her work for the exhibition Running on Empty, she peered out of window of a car, and used a digital camera to record the landscape ("at the Mpeg standard format of 15 frames per second" as Heather Nicol, the author of the catalogue, said). The resulting images are blurred and though not abstract, are toward abstraction.{{cite book |last1=Nicol |first1=Heather |url=http://library.gallery.ca/record=b1267090~S4 |title=Running on Empty |date= |publisher=Robert McLaughlin Gallery |year=2015 |isbn=9781926589855 |location=Oshawa |page=15 |language=en |access-date=21 August 2021}} Barry Schwabsky has noted that "her art offers one of the richest and most original revisionary instances of how the temporality of the act of looking can continue to keep painting in motion today".{{cite book |author=Schwabsky |first=Barry |url=http://library.gallery.ca/record=b1267874~S1 |title=Monica Tap: The Pace of Days |publisher=Macdonald Stewart Art Centre |year=2014 |isbn=978-1-926875-04-0 |location=Guelph |pages=8–13 |access-date=21 August 2021}}
She has exhibited her work across Canada and abroad, and is currently represented by [http://www.mkg127.com/ MKG127] in Toronto and [http://www.probertsongallery.com/ Peter Robertson Gallery] in Edmonton.{{cite web |title=Monica Tap |url=https://www.uoguelph.ca/arts/sites/uoguelph.ca.arts/files/public/cv/CV_Tap.pdf |website=www.uoguelph.ca |publisher=U Guelph |access-date=2021-08-23}}
Selected awards and honours
- 2008 Banff Centre for the Arts, "Artist in a Mountain Landscape"
- 2005-2009 Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Research/ Creation Grant in Fine Art "Translation as a Strategy of Renewal in Painting"
- 2005 Warren Goldring Scholarship, Banff, Optic Nerve Residency
- 2005 Open Studio Print Residency, Toronto, Ontario
- 2002 Banff Centre for the Arts, "New Works"
Collections
Monica Tap's works are included in many public and private collections including the Art Gallery of Alberta, the Art Gallery of Guelph, the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, the Tom Thomson Art Gallery, Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada (NYC, Berlin), Canada House (London, UK), Bank of Montréal, TELUS, Royal Bank of Canada, Scotiabank, Four Seasons Hotel & Resorts, ESSO Imperial Oil Canada, CIBC Mellon, University of Toronto, Würth Collection (Germany), and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.{{Cite web |title=Monica Tap |url=http://mkg127.com/artists-mkg/monica/# |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210601012409/https://mkg127.com/artists-mkg/monica/ |archive-date=1 June 2021 |access-date=16 February 2023 |website=MKG127}}
Publications
- 2004 The Princess and the Paint box. In Jane Fine, (invited essay for exhibition catalogue). Peirogi, Brooklyn, New York, p. 24
- 2002 Hungry Eyes in Hungry Eyes: New Abstract Painting in New York and Toronto (curated by Monica Tapp). Dalhousie Art Gallery.
References
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Category:Artists from Edmonton
Category:NSCAD University alumni
Category:Academic staff of the University of Guelph