Peggy Bell was raised in Toronto and she graduated from the Ontario College of Art in 1982, having specialized in painting and printmaking. She taught elementary and high school art in the Toronto school system. Teaching strong design principles to students had an impact in her developing creative work. Upon retirement in 2016 her practice shifted from a previous practice of traditional settler representations of landscape to her evolving abstract formations.
Peggy now resides on the stolen lands of the L?k?????n, Songhees, Esquimalt and W?SÁNE? peoples, or what is currently known as Victoria, BC. She now works daily in her studio as a member of Rockslide Studios in Victoria.
StatementI work in abstraction, concerning myself with evolving concerns for boundaries, borders and forms related to the cellular nature of being. The social, environmental, political and personal have hands in determining my choices. I live in a city, in a troubled world, not far from stunning but threatened nature and the work evokes these accordingly.
My work is increasingly a dialogue with surface and materials – an artist’s artists’ approach to possibilities within a limited range of media preferences. The choice to explore environmental impact reduction with respect to the use of plastic (acrylic) and wood is currently introducing shifting media possibilities and applications.
