( BIO )
Carmen Mattear (b. 2000) holds a bachelor's degree in studio art, with a minor in psychology from the University of Guelph. She has exhibited in and around Guelph Ontario, alongside which she works with the collective, Collective Year Off, writing, designing art books and making films. In 2025 she relocated to Scotland, where she painted in the Strachurmore Farmhouse for a year and then moved to the Isle of Mull, taking on the rugged coastline as her studio. At the end of 2026 she will be participating in BONFIRE, an artist residency in Iceland, as well as exhibiting art with N/A gallery and the Guelph Arts Council.
Carmen Mattear is a Canadian artist currently based in Scotland
( STATEMENT )
Mattear's body of work acts as a warm obituary. She celebrates the imprints of time and preserves the warmth of where people and moments once lived. She invites viewers to remember, to linger and feel the quiet humanity carried within what has been worn and left behind. Mattear pulls from film, secondhand clothing, antiques, childhood memories and the great outdoors. In her most recent work, since moving to the Isle of Mull, she is exploring the intersections of childhood memories in rural spaces and weathered female figures. Finding the freedom that comes with aging in nature: haunting the trees, the sea, and the sky⸺riding the line between beautiful and sinister.
CV
2022 | Bachelor of Arts Honours Degree with Distinction | Major in Studio Art, and Minor in Psychology | University of Guelph
Education
Upcoming 2026 | N/A Gallery | Guelph ON
Upcoming 2026 | 10C Main Floor Gallery | Guelph ON
2023 | An Obituary | Ed Video Media Arts Centre | Guelph ON
2021 | The Domestic Interior | Zavitz Gallery | Guelph ON
2021 | The Last Sound | The Project Space, University of Guelph
Solo Exhibitions
2025 | J. Lorito + Collective Year Off | Red Brick | Guelph ON
2024 | Collective Year Off | Rural Commons Gallery | Erin ON
2024 | Change | Juried Exhibition by Guelph Arts Council | artBar | Guelph ON
2022 | Threshold | Boarding House Gallery | Guelph ON
2022 | Open Studios | School of Fine Art and Music | University of Guelph
2022 | 54th Annual Juried Art Show | University of Guelph
2021 | Art in the Bullring | Guelph ON
2021 | Manifold | Zavitiz Gallery | Guelph ON
2021 | Face the Perspective | Zavitz Gallery | Guelph ON
2021 | Top 10 | Juried Art Show | Zavitz Gallery | Guelph, ON
2021 | Virtual Juried Art Show | University of Guelph
Group Exhibitions
Upcoming 2026 | BONFIRE | Winter Nomadic Art Retreat | Laugarvatn, Iceland
2023 | Hard and Soft: Ed Video Artist in Residence | Ed Video Media Arts Centre | Guelph ON
Residencies
2021- Present | Designer, Editor, Content Creator | J. Lorito Publishing | ON
2022 - Present | Artist, Filmmaker, Curator | Collective Year Off Productions | ON
2023 | An Obituary: Artist Talk | Ed Video Media Arts Centre | Guelph ON
2023 | Guest Instructor | The Raise-an-Artist Project | Halton Hills ON
Professional Experience
The scottish STUDIO
By the end of 2024 ‘the studio’ became more of a nomadic term. I went from working in the sunroom of my downtown Guelph flat to working in a spacious 1930s farmhouse in rural Ontario to hauling it across the pond to work in a farmhouse older than the country of Canada. Unable to work in a house without heat in the winter, I moved to a slightly newer cedar cottage on the Loch, then briefly to an old sandstone building in Edinburgh, to finally landing on the Isle of Mull in the Hebrides.
STRACHURMORE FARM
A notable studio was Strachurmore Farm. I painted in the village of Strachur for 8 months, spending 92 hours a week in the company of sheep, cows and a couple roommates consisting of spiders, rats and bats. My dad was born in Scotland, and ever since my family visited in 2022 I’ve had a powerful pull here. I fell in love with the ocean, the wet wool smell and the age of its buildings. But the romance of an old house quickly came crashing down to practicality in mid February, living without central heating and single glazed windows…
STOKING THE FIRE
My whole creative practice, the studio, centered around heat. I simply could not paint with purple hands and damp bones. There was a fast and urgent learning curve; dry wood vs. wet wood, soft wood vs. hard wood, how to use an axe, how to make kindling, different methods of stacking a fire, the open fireplace vs. the stove. I’ve never lived with a fire as the sole source of warmth. But my creative force had never been so simple before: roaring fire = work, fire dies = no work.
In the Edinburgh flat, the fireplace was still the sole source of heat. This time painting next to a gas fire I retired the axe.
EDINBURGH
For a couple months at the beginning of 2026 my partner and I landed in Edinburgh. In this tiny flat, consisting of two rooms, all domesticity was quickly abandoned and the space became a studio.
We longed for wide open spaces, and jumped at the opportunity to move to the Isle of Mull in the Scottish Hebrides.
ISLe of Mull
Now painting on the Isle of Mull, finding space anywhere I can. I’m staying dry thanks to the generosity of others opening up their spaces to me. I have been painting now in a caravan on the Isle of Mull, a green shack and carrying my sketchbook with me through the abandoned villages of Torloisk, down to the ocean at Calgary Beach and to Caliach Point.
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