Artist Statement

Creating art is a magical and humbling experience.  I never cease to be in awe of the creative process. Art allows me to connect the visible world around me with the less visible realities within.  My art tends to explore dreams, memories and other messages from the subconscious mind.  Issues of time, connection, circularity, and alignments appear frequently. I am inspired and fascinated by our human mystery and the theories and discoveries that contemporary science only hints at. We are on the edge of changes in our society on so many levels; physical, technological, medical, environmental, financial and spiritual. The artistic journey can lead us outward or pull us inward, and it is this expansion and contraction that will ultimately transform and heal us. 

Artist Bio

Lori Martin Jutras Comerford (LMJC)

Lori is originally from Windsor, Ontario.  She graduated from the University of Western Ontario with an Honours Bachelor of Arts in Visual Arts.  She has a minor in History and has an equal passion for both art and archeology.  

Lori has lived in many places in Canada such as Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Portage La Prairie, Manitoba and Cold Lake, Alberta.  She also had the opportunity to live in Baden, Baden Germany for three years.  While in Germany, Lori traveled extensively through Europe and the Soviet Union. Upon returning to Canada, she settled in York Region, outside Toronto. She has since had the opportunity to spend three summers living in Ireland.

Lori is active as a practicing and exhibiting artist.  She was a founding member of the Absolutely Apposed artist collective/studio and now has a home studio in Aurora, Ontario.

Teaching art, media and film has consumed much of Lori's time and energy.  Her passion for art and her commitment to making the planet a better place has lead her through 20 years of educating young artists.  She dedicated 9 years as the Visual Arts Department Head at Unionville High School, which is home to the Arts York/ Arts Unionville program. This September, she took on the role of Visual Arts Department Head at the new Tommy Douglas Secondary School in Vaughan, Ontario

 
 Thoughts and Ponderings

Bad artists ignore the darkness of human existence.  Good artists often get stuck there. Great artists embrace the full catastrophe of our condition and find beyond it an even deeper truth of peace, healing and redemption.  - Martha Beck

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes.  Art is knowing which ones to keep.

As soon as we set ourselves above nature, we isolate ourselves from our primal connection to our own true nature. We are part of something much larger than our own petty daily stresses.  The big picture is truly BIG and we are a small part of it. The state of microcosm and macrocosm exist simultaneously. In this way, our lives can be considered vastly important and completely insignificant at the same time.

Memory...is not the mechanical recording device people often think it is.  Memory is anything but constant, anything but indubitable.  It shifts and fades, blooms and dies, steps out for a cigarette and blows tendrils of information and emotion back under the door.

The artist uses the talent he has, wishing he had more talent.  The talent uses the artist it has, wishing it had more artist.  ~Robert Brault