Bio
Kristy Gordon’s work is a frank and intimate reflection of her curiosity about other people, transformations and self-discovery. Her paintings hang in over 500 public and private collections worldwide including the Government of Ontario Art Collection. She has been a full-time, professional painter since 2004, exhibiting her work internationally and earning numerous awards including the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant (2010, 2013), an Exceptional Merit Award from the Portrait Society of America (2014), and was a finalist for the 2013 Kingston Prize for Canadian portraiture.
She has been widely featured in numerous magazines, art publications, radio and television shows, including International Artist, Fine Art Connoisseur, The Artist’s Magazine, Southwest Art and Bravo!’s Star Portraits.
Gordon has seven years of experience teaching and conducting painting workshops throughout North America. She has taught at numerous academies and schools including The Academy of Realist Art Ottawa, The Lake Country Art House, and The Okanagan School of Arts in Penticton and has also substitute taught at the New York Academy of Art. She has lectured at China Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, New Century Artists in New York City and the Art of the Portrait in Washington, DC.
She received her MFA degree in Painting from the New York Academy of Art and holds a BFA in Drawing and Painting from the Ontario College of Art and Design. Additionally, she has studied classical drawing and painting at the Academy of Realist Art in Toronto and Andreeva Portrait Academy in Santa Fe. She has also studied privately with artists including Yuqi Wang, Odd Nerdrum, Juan Martinez, Jeremy Lipking.
Gordon is represented by Dacia Gallery in New York, Grenning Gallery in Sag Harbor and Cube Gallery in Ottawa, Canada. She lives and works in New York City.
Statement
There is definitely intent and purpose behind all of the symbolism in my paintings. I don’t limit the reading of a painting to only one set way of understanding it - I like people to bring their own ideas and associations in as well. As I construct the painting I’m aware of the types of associations I’m bringing in with certain imagery and if that’s not an association I want to make, I change it. As artists we have to be aware of all the connotations we may be making as we add elements to our paintings. If a symbol means something to us but also draws a link to something we totally don’t want to say, we need to be able to catch that and change it. Thematically my current body of paintings has a lot to do with bipolar oppositions like light and dark, destruction and creation, death and rebirth. The imagery I use ranges from the beautiful to the dangerous to the absurd.
.jpg)
