Ambera Wellmann Wins Top Prize at the 2017 RBC Canadian Painting Competition

TrépanierBaer is thrilled to announce that Ambera Wellmann has won the top prize at the 2017 RBC Canadian Painting Competition. Selected by a seven-person jury from a list of 15 finalists, she was awarded a cheque for $ 25,000.00 Tuesday evening [October 17, 2017] at a ceremony in Ottawa at the National Gallery of Canada.

Ambera Wellmann investigates how porcelain can be a surrogate for the body and a vehicle for perversity, manipulating the sensuality of the painted surface to blur the distinctions between material and flesh. “I always think paintings should be watched instead of looked at, so I try and slow things down to create moments inside the painting that can stagger easy moments of acknowledgement,” Wellmann has stated. 

And according to the  jury’s statement, Wellmann’s painting of an ambiguously gendered body “…dissects art history’s patriarchal traditions and asserts new representational power dynamics, creating slippery images that both attract the viewer and resist easy reading.”  

TrépanierBaer is proud of Ambera Wellmann’s accomplishment and wishes her every future success. The gallery will present her work at Art Toronto 2017 in SOLO Booth S09.

For more information about this year’s RBC Canadian Painting Competition, please click here.

For a pdf version of this announcment, please click on the document listed below.

Image Credit:

Slipper, 2017
Oil on Linen
39.3” x 31.5″