Charles Bierk: Where Were We?

Charles Bierk has spent the last fourteen years immersed in the language of portraiture. He spent the decades before that surrounded by a family of prominent Canadian artists. In this new suite of works, Bierk returns to painting people from the spiderweb of Toronto: including fellow painters, textile artists, and models. He invites them to his studio to be photographed and then sorts through hundreds of these photographs before beginning to paint, searching for a moment that can spark intrigue. 

“Working in large-scale, black and white oil paint, I aim to render people not just as they appear, but as they are remembered—monumental, complex, and present. This practice has always been deeply personal. The absence I felt from losing both of my parents at a young age has shaped the way I see people and the way I paint them—placing them prominently in time, preserving their presence, and celebrating a simulated permanence on canvas.” 

 

- Charles Bierk