Pilar Mehlis Studio
Pilar Mehlis is a painter and sculptor who lives and works in Vancouver, B.C.
She earned her BFA at the university of Victoria double majoring in Visual arts and History of art and continued her studies through mentorships with Paul Chizik, Thomas Anfield, Juliette Aristides, David Robinson and Danielle Swift.
Pilar has benefited from living in two distinct cultures; Bolivia and Canada, her works reflect this hybridity through the figures and narratives she portrays.
2020 allowed her to discover a deeper love of sculpture using polymer gypsum, cold cast bronze, recycled plastics and paper. Through these materials the series of Passarin figures arose.
The figures are molded after the Cliff swallow, a bird that, like her, migrates between Canada and Bolivia. Passerine reminded her of the word “pasar” which in Spanish means to go through. The Cliff Swallow and her pass though many conditions and places as they migrate. This travel companion, as it were, allows her to speak of all things migratory in whimsical and poetic ways.
Her work has been shown in public and private galleries, arts festivals and has been featured online at The Latin American Cultural Centre 2020, CBC Radio International 2019, The Jealous Curator Blog 2018 and CBC Arts Minute 2018 among others.
In my work, I seek to correspond with Beauty and its transcendence.
Plato wrote, “ The power of the Good has taken refuge in the nature of the Beautiful” and John Paul II in his letter to artists noted ”in a certain sense beauty is the visible form of the good, just as the good is the metaphysical condition of beauty”.
My hope is that the Spirit of good, beauty and truth will infuse indelibly into my work as it seeks to unlock the yearning of the human heart.
