Lorraine Simms

Lorraine Simms explores our relationship to the natural world in a wide range of media. Over the past thirty years, her paintings, drawings, and sculptures have focused on representations of plant and animal forms. Offering nuanced reflections on our relationship with nature, she considers our responsibility towards animals and the environment in works that are materially rich and firmly rooted in process.

The drawings in her ongoing series Shadowland faithfully represent the cast shadows of preserved animal remains. They were developed during residencies in the Mammalogy Departments of the American Museum of Natural History in New York, the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa, and the Redpath Museum in Montréal, where she was granted wide-ranging access to their vast collections. Working with animals considered endangered, or on the verge of extinction, she explored concepts of absence, empathy, and loss.

Her recent paintings focus on representations of dried leaves assembled from her own collections of preserved flora. Evoking the scientific tradition of specimen collecting and study, she paints the same motif, based on close observation, until the canvas is fully covered. During this process of duplication, the forms begin to vary in small ways. This echoes the repetitiveness of quotidian actions and circadian rhythms, always similar but never the same. In these works, as in life, repetition becomes a catalyst for transformation, signifying hope, perseverance, and dedication.

Lorraine Simms has exhibited her work across Canada and the U.S., with notable solo exhibitions at major institutions such as the Canadian Museum of Nature (Ottawa), the Redpath Museum (Montréal), and the Illingworth Kerr Gallery (Alberta). She has also participated in prestigious artist residencies at MASS MoCA (Massachusetts), the American Museum of Natural History (New York), and the Symposium de Baie-Saint-Paul. Her work is represented in prominent corporate and museum collections, including the Musée des beaux-arts de Baie-Saint-Paul, Beaverbrook Gallery, Doris McCarthy Gallery, Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Bank of Montreal, and the Banque Nationale.