Douglas Scholes
Immersion residency
May 8 - June 22, 2025
End-of-residency meeting: Saturday, June 21, at 4 p.m.
Douglas Scholes bases his artistic practice on pragmatist aesthetics, privileging lived experience and the connections between art and everyday life. His work explores the cycles of extraction, production, and consumption. The idea of care, of maintenance, the gestures of cleaning, restoration, or repair are central to his creative process. He thus describes his approach as an archaeology of the present and the ordinary.
Through sculpture, video, photography, and performance, Scholes adopts an engaged and playful approach to revealing often-overlooked details of the environment. Her projects utilize accessible and reusable materials, such as beeswax, which she frequently employs. She sees beeswax as a metaphor for community, social structures, and collective work. Scholes also uses it for its poetic and functional qualities, its malleability, and its ecological neutrality.
During his stay at Frelighsburg Douglas Scholes is working on a new phase of his Collections & Accumulations project. He will meet with members of the community to explore the idea of collecting in the daily lives of many villagers. These exchanges will inform new works in photography, video, and sculpture.
Douglas Scholes. Photo: Ulric Manteau
Biography
Douglas Scholes is a multidisciplinary artist who lives and works in Montreal. His artistic practice is rooted in his life experiences, including working as a carpenter, cook, bicycle mechanic, art restorer, and handyman. He graduated from the University of Lethbridge (Bachelor of Fine Arts, 1999) and the University of Québec in Montreal (Master of Fine Arts, 2001). Douglas Scholes has participated in numerous exhibitions, including at the Foreman Gallery, Bishop’s University (Lennoxville, 2024), at Sagamie (Alma, 2023), at Sporobole (Sherbrooke, 2018), at the Barachois In Situ Biennial (Barachois, 2021), at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia (Halifax, 2019), at Repères2017 with Parks Canada (Montreal, 2017), at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery (Lethbridge, 2015). He has also participated in several artist residencies in Canada, the United States, and Europe, including Banff (2014), the Canada Council for the Arts artist residency (London, UK, 2012), RadArt (Italy, 2012), 3e Impérial (Granby, 2010-2011), DARE-DARE (Montreal and Detroit, 2004 and 2011), and La Maison Laurentine (France, 2011). He is represented by the Robertson Ares Gallery in Montreal.
