 |
Canadian writer
and artist Heather Spears was educated at the University of British
Columbia, The Vancouver School of Art and the University of Copenhagen.
She is divorced and has 4 children. She has lived in Denmark since
1962. She has held over 75 solo exhibitions and published 11collections
of poetry and 3 novels of speculative
fiction (1991-96), the Moonfall Trilogy.
The Flourish, (04) a novel of crime
fiction and the family, came out in Canada and was republished in
Europe as A Muted Voice (09). The
Creative Eye (07), is the first of a series on visual perception.
She has 3 books of drawings:
Drawn from the Fire (89) Massacre
(90); and Line by Line (02).
Drawings from the Newborn (86),
The Panum Poems (96) and Required
Reading (00) contain both poems and full-page drawings. Her
latest collection of poetry, I can
still draw (08), was shortlisted for the Lowther Memorial Award.
She has illustrated numerous books and articles; and also draws
courtroom, dance, theatre and childbirth. Specialising in drawing
children, in particular premature and other threatened infants,
she travels widely and has drawn in hospitals in the Middle East,
Europe and America.
"mastery
of line and movement,"... "the sureness of her hand and the sympathy
of her eye. She writes poems in the same way."
"very
fluid lines that come out in words rather than in charcoal ... an
almost Zen quality to her attention and emotional rectitude."
"Coming
into a book of Heather Spears' poems is to take your life in your
hands. Nothing is hidden, the poem follows a line like a sketch,
but it is a line which traces a crack in the cosmos."
"She goes looking for trouble, you could say, and finds it
in almost every medium."
Residing
in Denmark, Heather Spears makes annual reading and lecture tours
to Canada. As a practising draughtsman and teacher she has thought
deeply about drawing and visual perception, and has completed a
book on creativity, The Creative Eye, (Arcturus 2007). She
is preparing a series of manuals of modelling and drawing the human
head and on drawing the figure in motion. She
continues medical drawing projects and hospital residencies, her
latest being at St. Olav's Hospital, Trondheim, Norway (02) and
University Hospitals, Edmonton (04).
She has attended
numerous literary conferences and festivals both as participant
and Artist-in-Residence, including Hay-on Wye (97), Mantua Fesitvaletteratura
(97 and 98) and The Cheltenham festival (92, 93, 99, 00, 01, 02,
03). She was Visiting Writing Professional, University of Windsor
(99), and Visiting Lecturer in the Humanities, Dalhousie Medical
School (99) and Biomedical Communications, University of Toronto
(04).
Heather Spears is a member of PEN, The League of Canadian Poets,
The Writers' Union of Canada, SF Canada, The Society of Authors,
and Tegnernes Forbund (Danish Graphic Artist's Federation).
The Heather Spears archive is housed at the University of British
Columbia in Vanouver and is available for use by researchers and others interested.
Many of Heather Spears’s drawings have been purchased by the Welcome
Trust. Many other images can be found in the Wellcome Library of
images, and are available for reproduction /publication.
|