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curled hair, bare centre
oil on unstretched canvas
43 x 36"
2019
painting
Via portraiture and a detailed painting process, Fermor uses colour and the human figure to portray thoughtful and intimate experiences. A self-taught painter, Fermor employs traditional methods of oil paint to explore themes of self-excavation, loneliness, and generational alienation.
Rainbow Elder: Catherine
oil on wood panel
14 x 11"
2023
Through their painting practice, Fermor has exhibited work and travelled to New York, Toronto, and St. John's NL, and been in residence with NYU, Calgary Allied Arts Foundation, the Trico Changemaker Studio, and the Feminist Art Collective, at Artscape Gibraltar.
In 2018 they were a runner-up for the 20th Annual RBC painting competition and has won multiple municipal, provincial, and federal grants to support their practice.
PULP (2021-2)
Pulp is an exhibition of paintings that celebrates the history of books published in the niche, mid-20th-century genre of lesbian pulp ficton by re-creating and sizing-up their covers.
“The Delicate Vice” (1963), “The Third Sex” (1959), “The Narrow Line” (1963), and “Perfume and Pain” (1963), are titles from a genre of mid- 20th century books now known as the Golden Era of lesbian publishing. The cheap, low-print quality books were filled with cliched stories of sex, murder, blackmail, addiction, and queer perversion. Crude and harmful as they were, they were also rare mid-century representations of queer life and love.
Anything Goes and The Narrow Line
Oil on stretched canvas
2022, 2021
click below to expand
The Leather Man
oil on unstretched canvas
2019
Other Tales of Loneliness (2019)
Created during Fermor's time at the Calgary Allied Art Foundation residency, Other Tales is the predecessor to Pulp. Fermor dressed up and photographed themselves as different icons or archetypes of queer history (including the leather man, literary androgyne, and the pulp lesbian). Other Tales explores how within queer history there is a legacy of both courage and loneliness, and how Fermor's own experiences of alienation were in fact what connected them to that legacy.
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self portraiture (2019-23)
Fermor started teaching themselves traditional oil painting in 2018. Without any models, they used self-portraiture to do so. Eventually, self- potraiture became a pillar of their practice.
Within a year, Fermor was a finalist in a national painting contest (RBC Painting Competition). They have since attended multiple residencies for self-portrait projects and continue to explore the queer self-gaze and disabled inner dialogue via painting.
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Odd Skies / Queering Prairie Skies (2023-4)
For an ongoing research project, Fermor has been photographing skyscapes at various points in the day and started matching those different times with different queer-coded fabrics and forms. Via this project, they are training themselves in rendering vibrant, sky-coloured skin tones. They intend to create a trans portrait series with their research. You can visit their patreon or instagram for periodic updates on this project.
