Camille Myles is a French-Canadian multi-disciplinary contemporary artist and conservation activist exploring imagery that is grounded in our identity and reflects our impacts on the environment. Working in public art, painting, sculpture and installation, she creates art that tells a story linked to community connection, self-reflection and the restorative effects of nature.
She received her BFA in Sculpture & Installation at Ottawa University and her MA in Heritage Conservation at Carleton University. Marrying her passion for conservation and art, she has worked as an archaeologist, in artist-run centres, the National Art Gallery in Ottawa, ICCROM in Rome, Canada’s National Trust and was a Park Superintendent at Parks Canada. Myles has exhibited extensively including Quest Art Gallery, Ottawa Art Gallery, BHA Gallery, Arts Mums United, Visionary Art Collective, Arts to Hearts Project, PxP Contemporary, Ottawa Art Gallery, Gallery 115, among others. In 2022, she was invited in 2022 to join the International Broken Forests Art Collective. She has been awarded an art residency in June 2022 at Studio H Canada in Victoria BC where she developed her new painting collection of “Crying Landscapes” - a plea for change as well as “I Stand Alone” an interactive drawing installation which has been exhibited at Quest Art Gallery in August-Sept 2022.
Being drawn to the power of public art as a social community conversation, the artist has been creating murals and large-scale public art sculptures in Midland and in Penetanguishene. Her work has been featured by the Art Seen Magazine, Jealous Curator, Toronto Star, Create! Magazine, Visionary Art Collective, Arts to Hearts Project, Women United in Art Magazine and podcasts including Arts Mums United, Hot Mess to Awesomeness & CFRH. She’s won the Diamond Jubilee Medal and finalist of the Canadian RBC New Painting Competition. She’s a founding artist member of the Art Queens and The Works by Erika B Hess from I like your Work. Originally from Gatineau, Quebec, she now lives along the shores of Georgian Bay, in Tiny Ontario with her husband and three young children.
In my art practice, I’m inspired by the natural world around me and its precarity - constant change and threats to our environment shape how I see the world. I’m interested in imagery and landscapes that remind us that our time on this Earth is finite, that everything comes back to a natural state of being. We all need to listen a little more closely to the pleas of our natural world.
Whether working with reflective materials in large-scale public art projects in sculptural installations or capturing the essence and complexities of a place through painting and drawing, my work is layered with meaning, history and textures. As a conservation activist and visual artist, art that speaks to its environment and draws the viewer in as an active participant, is of particular interest to me. I use elements that combine an interest in the history of the place and its tie to the environment. I like to challenge the viewer’s perspective, incorporating components that appear to defy gravity, trick the eye, and offer elements that are ever-changing. Through reflections and distortions, my work grounds the spectator in the present, encouraging each viewer to see themselves as part of, not separate from, the story it tells. I encourage the viewer to “play” with art.
I’m influenced by other female installation and public art artists such as Geneviève Cadieux, Janet Cardiff, Kiki Smith, Louise Bourgeois, Stephanie Kilgast, Hugh Hayden and Mandy Cano Villalobos for their tenacity, strength in messaging and bravery.
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