Amy Swartz

Amy Swartz is a Toronto based visual artist whose sculptures, installations, and drawings explore the relationship between humans and the natural world. Combining natural and manufactured materials through meticulous hand-built processes, her work examines obsession, control, and mortality through intricate narratives that are both unsettling and darkly humorous.​

​

Amy has presented solo exhibitions at museums and public galleries across Canada, including the Lincoln Museum and Cultural Centre, ARTSPACE, Cambridge Galleries, the Redpath Museum, Durham Art Gallery, and Angell Gallery. Her work has been supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, the Toronto Arts Council, and the Banff Centre, and has been featured in publications including Canadian Art, The Globe and Mail, and The Toronto Star. She is also one of the founding members of the Drawing Board Collective, exploring institutional critique with artists JJ Lee and Natalie Waldburger. She is an Assistant Professor and Chair of First Year Experience in the Faculty of Art at OCAD University.​

​Her work explores the idea of obsession — not only in the practice of art, but also in humanity’s perceived control over nature, life, and death. As R.M. Vaughan wrote, “Swartz makes even the tiniest deaths meaningful (and, yes, morbidly funny).”

​