About the Artist
Sandy Middleton is a mixed media photographic artist who resides in St.Catharines, Ontario, Canada. Her education and background is in still photography with a degree from Ryerson University. She went on to study both Graphic and Interior Design Post University. She lived and worked as a commercial photographer in Toronto for close to twenty years but was interested in switching directions to a more creative practice. After relocating to the Niagara region, she was able begin making both fine art & conceptual based work. Middleton has exhibited extensively throughout Ontario including shows such as the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition, The Artist Project, as well as gallery exhibitions, most recently The Grimsby Public Art Gallery in 2019. In 2021 she was nominated as one of 52 finalists for the Salt Spring National Arts Award, a prestigious exhibition in western Canada. She is the recipient of several Ontario Arts Council Grants and was nominated on two occasions as Established Artist for the St. Catharines Arts Awards. Middleton is very involved within her arts community on various boards and is the Chair of the Arts and Culture Committee for the City of St.Catharines; she has been a committee member for 12 years.
Artist Statement
For the past eight years my personal and project-based work has been focused on found family images, written histories and personal objects. These photographs, diaries, books and paintings have shaped my practice. The work I’ve made investigates issues of identity, memory and archive.
I often rearrange photographs as I work to find new meaning by manipulating the originals. This process allows me to re-invent or recreate one’s memory or the perceived reality of it. I aim to disturb the natural order and create chaos where there is none, to unearth what may be beneath the surface.
What are your “Treasured moments” & how do you connect it to your work?
This work began with an orphaned photo album. The people, strangers to me but somehow, I felt they needed my attention. Snapshots of these moments once precious, intimate, prized now lay discarded. By creating a new narrative I became interested in creating transitional moments, altered truths. Scratched, recomposed and familiar elements removed, I wanted the viewer to question their own history through memory, its fragility and its tenuous truth. Allowing the images to reveal themselves and tell new stories. Imposing my own presence into their stories.
