ABOUT MICHAEL SHUMIATCHER

Michael Shumiatcher is an artist whose creative journey spans 5 decades in a wide range of media, including oil painting, sculpture, video, and sound. Shumiatcher's first medium was oil on canvas, as taught by his mentor in the late 1970s, American painter Peter Devine. He then transitioned to sculpture, graduating from the sculpture department of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 1984. Following art school, he showed in Halifax, Calgary, and Vancouver before entering a career in teaching, for which his art practice, while remaining active, took a back seat. Since 2010, Shumiatcher has refocused on his art, painting in oils once more, the passion of his pre art college years. His influences include American Social Realism and the Ashcan School of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and the American Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism, and conceptual art movements that thrived in America starting in the latter 1910s, with artists like Marcel Duchamp, through to the 1970s. In keeping with these influences - The Ashcan School, Minimalism, and conceptual art - Shumiatcher's work showcases an appreciation for simplicity and form while simultaneously inviting viewers to construe, engage with, gaze upon, the complexities of human experience.