Lori Ridgeway is a landscape oil painter, originally from Alberta now living in Ottawa, Ontario. Her paintings have been inspired mainly by the forest, grasses marshes and shorelines mainly in and around Ottawa. Her focus is on expressing patterns of line, shapes, colour, and especially light and shadow in the near landscape – complexity
that lies below the superficial and, often, everyday notice, but which forms the coherent whole. Her artistic goal is to express extraordinary moments from ordinary ones. Her paintings have been accepted into juried shows locally, regionally, nationally and internationally and have won jury awards, including three Best in Show awards, two of them in 2023. She is an elected member of the Society of Canadian Artists.
Lori began her interest in art in High School, where she was active in the visual and other arts. She focused on ink and wash paintings, which were often chosen for international traveling student shows. While planning a career in design, her long professional career ultimately took a much different turn, but she never lost sight her love and fascination for art. She spent many long hours on the edges of her international career in galleries and art neighborhoods in North America and around the world. Her professional career was focused on looking beyond the superficial to understand and integrate the complexity of issues — often less understood or overlooked — to find solutions. This interest has shaped her eye and artistic intellect as well.
On retirement in 2013, Lori returned to painting, this time in oil. As part of an aggressive self-directed continuous learning plan, she has followed classes since 2014 at the Ottawa School of Art, through the Winslow Art Centre (Seattle WA), and many workshops, courses and discussions by and with diverse top Canadian and international artists. Her focus has been on understanding design and colour theory, best practices in painting processes and philosophies and how they can inform her own artistic intuition and process, all while developing and maintaining her individual artistic voice. Her continuous learning philosophy has been to create a better-informed intuition and keener observation (i.e., ‘the more you understand, the more you see’).
She is a supporting member of the Federation of Canadian Artists (both National and Ontario Chapter) , as well as an active member of the East Central Ontario Art Association, the West Carleton Arts Society, and two other local Ottawa Societies. Her paintings have been accepted into local, regional, national and international juried exhibitions and group shows. Her work has won several Jury awards including two ‘Best in Show’.
Artist Statement
I am a landscapes oil painter living in Ottawa, Ontario. However, my aesthetic was mainly shaped by my years spent in the high back country of the Rocky Mountains. It is
where I first explicitly thought about the dazzle of light and shadow, colour and even scent and sound that created my sense and memory of immediate ‘place’, which
stopped me in my tracks as often as the incomparable vistas. It remains the source of my inspiration in nature where I now live. My creative focus on the nearer landscape is
also the result of years of professional immersion in making sense and order from the complexity that underlies superficial impressions. I thus want to share how I see the patterns in landscape revealed by lines, shapes, colour and light and shadow — the very weft and warp of the fabric of our surroundings. I want to capture and amplify, through mark making and colour, that which often escapes everyday notice — the contrasts of line, positive and negative shapes and colour temperature to create interest, texture and movement in my paintings. Increasingly, colour and light is my subject. My impressions draw especially from trees, branches, grasses, and shorelines, and often their reflections, with a goal to make extraordinary moments from ordinary ones. I use traditional oil paints to amplify marks, shapes and patterns to draw the eye on a
path that is intended to be savoured slowly, but which ultimately adds to a whole. My paintings are intended to be both abstracted but believable. I paint mainly in medium or
large format.
Lori Ridgeway CV (PDF)
