Biography

Victoria Wallace – Biography 

Victoria Wallace is a painter and mixed media artist and art educator, born and raised in Toronto, Canada. Victoria has shown her paintings for over 40 years in art galleries, exhibitions, and art festivals in Toronto, Mississauga, Peterborough, Cobourg, Haliburton, Warkworth, online, and in her Peterborough art studio. Her work is held in private collections across Canada, the US, and Europe.

She operated a successful mural and specialty paint finish company in Toronto for over 25 years, which included work for film, television, and commercials, in schools, businesses, and countless private residences.

Victoria, primarily self-taught, is an elected member of the Ontario Society of Artists, the Society of Canadian Artists, the Federation of Canadian Artists, and a regular on the Kawartha Autumn Studio Tour. She is a Golden Artist Educator for Golden Paints and an R&F Certified Encaustic Instructor with R&F Handmade Paints. Victoria has taught at the Haliburton School of Art and Design, Sir Sandford Fleming College (Peterborough), the Art Gallery of Peterborough, the Art School of Peterborough, Station Gallery (Whitby), the York Artists' Guild (Toronto), Humber College Assembly Hall (Toronto), Lakefield College, with GoBoomerang (online), and many other public and private arts and educational institutions. 

Victoria Wallace - Artist Statement and Creative Process

"My paintings contain a combination of photo-realistic subject matter in dream-like, surrealistic settings. This often includes subtly allegorical interplay, both esoteric and more broadly accessible. Viewers will find my work is also infused with the 'trompe l’oeil' influence I mastered during my many years of mural painting.

I see myself as a realist gone awry, with my conceptual artistic ventures hovering somewhere between surrealistic narratives and that of magic realism, which paints a realistic view of the world while also adding magical elements, often blurring the lines between fantasy and reality. This frees me to indulge my passions for painting birds, insects, and animals, interiors, exteriors, cityscapes and landscapes, people/characters I meet, the conversations we have that inspire me visually, where I've lived and the places I visit.

My preferred painting media are acrylic and encaustic, often combining dry media, such as Conté, pastels, charcoal, graphite, coloured pencils, water soluble drawing media, crayons, but also including oil paints and sticks, ink, archival markers, Washi, collage elements, mica, and more."

She cites René Magritte, Frida Kahlo, Emily Carr, Georgia O'Keeffe, Salvador Dalí, Joan Miró, Diego Rivera, and several of the French Impressionists as her greatest influences. 

Influences

René Magritte, Dali, Frida Kahlo, Georgia O'Keeffe, Emily Carr, Surrealism, Magic Realism, Vincent van Gogh, Mary Cassatt, Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Paul Gauguin, Maxfield Parrish

Education

The artist at work