Heidi Taillefer was born in 1970, and lives and works in Montreal, Quebec. She attended weekly art classes as a child at a local art school in Beaconsfield, Quebec, focusing on watercolor and various types of arts and crafts. By the early 90’s Taillefer began working as a commercial illustrator, securing relationships with clients such as the Cirque du Soleil, for whom she worked on numerous projects both in Canada and abroad. By 2004 she devoted her time fully to fine art, exhibiting internationally in both gallery and museum venues.
Taillefer’s work is consonant with early 20th century surrealists such as Max Ernst, Paul Delvaux, and Giorgio de Chirico, and is an original creative fusion of classical figurative painting, surrealism, contemporary realism, and mythology combined with popular figurative traditions ranging from Victorian romanticism to science fiction.
Her paintings often depict subjects comprised of seemingly incongruous objects characterized as symbolic, which form a complex composite of elements and add a contemporary spin to often classical icons. Taillefer's work highlights our growing hybridization with technology, in which she depicts “machine-like” constructions. Her approach is to infuse primordial aspects of the human condition into these hybridized humans and animals, and seeks to remind the viewer of the inescapable nature of our being despite our increasing merger with technology.
