biography

Photograph by Fredrick McDonald 2023

Cheryl Buckmaster is a Saskatchewan artist educated at Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver, B.C. Her work is comprised mainly of large figurative paintings serially painted to form narratives of human experience and spirit. Her work is infused with symbolism and wit,  gently inviting viewers to contemplate the subject and scene before them. Buckmaster was featured as one of three contemporary Saskatchewan painters at AKA Gallery’s 2010 exhibition Region, and her “New Sheet Series” was featured in 2007 at the Mendel Art Gallery in the joint exhibition Articulation: Joined.

Her work is represented in collections throughout Canada and the United States. Cheryl has connected with Saskatoon’s communities by founding and managing the Bluemoon Artists Studio (20th St W., 2003-2007), as a college life drawing art instructor, as a mentor to emerging artists, therapeutic home operator for youth at risk, and as program facilitator and art instructor for inner city youth. From 2008 to 2019 Buckmaster was represented by the late Darrell Bell, and since 2011, has been fulfilling private, public, and corporate commissions as a studio artist while parenting her daughter.

Recent work with scientists and water on First Nation Land has led Buckmaster to explore the practice of research-creation as the first Visual Artist master student in the School of Environment and Sustainability at the University of Saskatchewan. Buckmaster is the artist for the Canada Genome Project, G.R.O.W. and served as an artistic mentor for the USASK ENVS 820 Water, Human Health and Wellbeing course.

Collaborating visual art with land-based knowledge and scientific research communicates in a language that reaches more members of society than scientific papers. Buckmaster’s art comes together with research to create new knowledge like the chalk-drawing animation of Yellow Quill’s water situation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqGSm8xFR5A.

Her “Water” artwork infused environmental and social justice teachings of Indigenous Elders with scientific findings on prairie groundwater. “Water” is installed at the National Hydrology Research Centre in Saskatoon, and can be viewed in the Global Water Futures Virtual Art Gallery:  https://gwf.usask.ca/prairiewater/prairie-water-art-piece.php

“I am a symbolist. I love to create pivotal narratives, moments, and experiences

which bring forth the notion and realization

of individual and collective change”

~ Cheryl Buckmaster