Monica Tap (born 1962) is a Canadian painter, artist and educator. She lives in Toronto, Ontario, and teaches at the University of Guelph. She is known for engaging and challenging conventions concerning

landscape A landscape is the visible features of an area of land, its landforms, and how they integrate with natural or man-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.''New Oxford American Dictionary''. A landscape includes the ...

and

still-life painting A still life (plural: still lifes) is a work of art depicting mostly inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which are either natural (food, flowers, dead animals, plants, rocks, shells, etc.) or man-made (drinking glasses, boo ...

.Tousley, Nancy ''Monica Tap: Painting and Perception'' Monica Tap Paintings ed. Susan Harrison. Montreal: ABC Art Books Canada, 2004. 11-21 Exhibition Catalogue

Biography

Tap was born in Edmonton, Alberta. She attended the Alberta College of Art, University of Alberta (1986), and NSCAD University for her BFA (1990), and MFA (1996). She studied Fine Arts with

Gerald Ferguson Gerald Ferguson (January 29, 1937 – October 8, 2009) was a conceptual artist and painter who lived and taught in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Born in Cincinnati he was both a Canadian and US citizen. Background After receiving his MFA from Ohio Un ...

. Tap is also a professor at the University of Guelph in the School of Fine Art and Music.

Artistic career

Tap often uses photographs and video stills as source material for her paintings. For instance, in her work for the exhibition ''Running on Empty'', she peered out of window of a car, and used a digital camera to record the landscape ("at the Mpeg standard format of 15 frames per second" as Heather Nicol, the author of the catalogue, said). The resulting images are blurred and though not abstract, are toward abstraction. Barry Schwabsky has noted that "her art offers one of the richest and most original revisionary instances of how the temporality of the act of looking can continue to keep painting in motion today". She has exhibited her work across Canada and abroad, and is currently represented b
MKG127
in Toronto an
Peter Robertson Gallery
in Edmonton.

Selected awards and honours

*2008

Banff Centre for the Arts Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, formerly known as The Banff Centre (and previously The Banff Centre for Continuing Education), located in Banff, Alberta, was established in 1933 as the Banff School of Drama. It was granted full autonomy as ...

, "Artist in a Mountain Landscape" *2005-2009 Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Research/ Creation Grant in Fine Art "Translation as a Strategy of Renewal in Painting" *2005 Warren Goldring Scholarship, Banff, Optic Nerve Residency *2005 Open Studio Print Residency, Toronto, Ontario *2002 Banff Centre for the Arts, "New Works"

Collections

Monica Tap's works are included in many public and private collections including the Art Gallery of Alberta, the

Art Gallery of Guelph The Art Gallery of Guelph (AGG), formerly the Macdonald Stewart Art Centre, is a public gallery and adjoining sculpture park in Guelph, Ontario. The AGG has a collection of over 9,000 works and focusses on research, publishing, educational progra ...

, the

Art Gallery of Nova Scotia The Art Gallery of Nova Scotia (AGNS) is a public provincial art museum based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. The art museum's primary building complex is located in downtown Halifax and takes up approximately of space. The museum complex compr ...

, the Tom Thomson Art Gallery, Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada (NYC, Berlin), Canada House (London, UK), Bank of Montréal, TELUS, Royal Bank of Canada, Scotiabank, Four Seasons Hotel & Resorts, ESSO Imperial Oil Canada, CIBC Mellon, University of Toronto, Würth Collection (Germany), and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.

Publications

* 2004 ''The Princess and the Paint box''. In Jane Fine, (invited essay for exhibition catalogue). Peirogi, Brooklyn, New York, p. 24 * 2002 ''Hungry Eyes'' in ''Hungry Eyes: New Abstract Painting in New York and Toronto'' (curated by Monica Tapp). Dalhousie Art Gallery.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tap, Monica 1962 births Living people Artists from Edmonton Canadian women painters NSCAD University alumni Academic staff of the University of Guelph 21st-century Canadian painters 21st-century Canadian women artists 21st-century women painters