In this series, your assignment is to write a detailed synopsis of a single artist’s career for a general reader. How do you approach this task?

My goal is to provide readers a brief introduction to important Canadian artists. I strive to include enough biographical background on each to provide a context for their work without attempting to explain their work through their biography. I try to make sure that I quote other writers who have weighed in on the artists, and to use direct quotations from the artists themselves where possible. I have had some professional relationship with all of the artists I choose to write about, either as a curator or a critic. And while it’s not exactly easy, it’s not as difficult as it may seem. Like so much in life, practice is key.

Artists get asked about where they get their ideas, but writers and curators get asked why they chose certain artists to champion (the implication usually being that the choice was somehow questionable). When your ability to include an artist in an exhibition, in a book or article, or in a public collection depends on making the case for that artist, you learn to express an opinion about an artist’s importance quickly and succinctly. If you stick with it, some of your opinions (and only some) become accepted. The artists I write about in these field guides are part of the conversation about Canadian art history, for all that their reputations may still be evolving. Every field guide is an exercise in distilling a huge amount of information into what is, I hope, a readable and entertaining introduction. It doesn’t provide the definitive version on any artist’s work or career—only their work can do that.

What is it about Colleen Wolstenholme and her work that compelled you to include her in the series?

I knew I had to write a Field Guide about Colleen Wolstenholme because her work has been a touchstone in my curatorial and writing career for twenty-five years. I met Colleen while we were both students at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Designn (NSCAD). She was a few years ahead of me. But I didn’t really know much about her work until the late 1990s when her Vancouver exhibition Pills made the cover of C Magazine. By that point I was regularly writing for C and other art magazines, as well as curating exhibitions. The feature made a huge impact on me. Colleen’s work seemed both groundbreaking and somehow familiar. It perfectly articulated the type of sculpture that had been coming out of NSCAD over the previous decade. I included her work in Desire, a show of contemporary sculptors for the Confederation Centre Art Gallery in 1999. It was my first major exhibition as a curator and my first of a series of projects looking at Canadian ‘new image’ sculpture, what came to be called ‘Halifax Sculpture’.

I also thought that it was time to start writing about artists from my generation, rather than just those of the generation of our teachers (and theirs). And while Colleen has achieved a certain amount of art-world recognition—inclusion in public collections, a university teaching position, commercial gallery representation—she is not as well-known as she should be. Being an artist is hard and often thankless. With Colleen Wolstenholme: Complications I am hoping to shine a little more light on an artist who continues to make compelling, challenging and exciting work. She is well worth getting to know.