Artist bio for highly-regarded westcoast Canadian artist Cybele Ironside.
Cybele Ironside is a Canadian lyrical expressionist who uses suggestive forms and imagined landscapes to convey a metaphysical sense of awareness and manifest her own private emotions and metaphorical associations with each scene. Luminous and compelling, Ironside’s work lingers between representation and abstraction, appearing as evocations of the sublime power in being present and aware.
Born in Vancouver, Ironside was raised by creative parents committed to the sensibilities of 1970s open learning theories. Freedom of thought mattered most of all. Her mother, Anne, was a leading education pioneer and the family’s Bowen Island property became Ashoka House, a seminal educational retreat for alternative teaching. For Ironside as a kid, island life allowed her independent spirit to follow her own curiousities. In the light, water, trees and ground, Ironside came to appreciate an animistic spirit that enlivens all of nature. The feeling that the world was alive with potential.
Ironside developed her creative skills and artistic insights over many years of guided instruction at the famed Art Students League in New York City. Early on, she became interested in the expressive art and tumultuous personal stories of the New York School of abstract expressionists. Seeking to invest her work with personal emotions and private meaning, she recalled her west coast roots and the scenes that had made a lasting impression on her. But her focus shifted from recreating actual places toward abstracted reinterpretations and a looser, dreamlike sense of open space. Her work began to take on metaphorical associations – as manifestations of hope, joy, heartache and enlightenment.
In her current practice, Ironside makes masterful use of light and often employs rich, jewel-toned colours that resonate with the spiritual allure of stained glass, Her scenes radiate an inner ambiance, glowing and glowering from within. Working on canvas and panel, Ironside builds up the surface with a subtle sculptural effect through many layers of thin pigmented glazes achieving exceptional depth and luminosity. Her paintings provide a revelatory, immersive intimacy as much as they project drama and grandeur.
Cybele Ironside lives in Vancouver, Canada and works from her studio in the historic 1000 Parker Building in the city’s eastside arts district.
