Influenced by her time in the forest and her love of nature, Crystel Pereira’s work explores the climate crisis and our relationship to the environment through contemporary landscape painting. Her oil paintings are sometimes painted outdoors, sometimes painted using 3D maquettes that she creates as reference. She also draws inspiration from her personal photos and her imagination in order to create unique landscapes.
Convinced of the relevance of painting contemporary landscapes, she questions how to represent landscapes today while being aware of our changing climate, and her work is constantly in search of new approaches. She uses landscape to consider questions of ecology, belonging, home, and sustainability. She is particularly interested in representing the influence of human presence on wild spaces. She seeks to portray this not only by highlighting destructive aspects, but also by suggesting our complex relationship to our environment.
Based in Dunham, Crystel Pereira completed her BFA in painting and drawing at Concordia University in 2021, and was awarded the Guido Molinari prize. She has shown her work in various group shows in Quebec, notably solo exhibitions at Aussenwelt Gallery in Montreal (2022) and at the Dunham Art Center (2023). She received a grant from the CALQ in 2022 to create work on the themes of ecoanxiety and the climate crisis. Her work is in private collections, and in the art collection of the City of Laval. She is currently working on a series of triptychs thanks to a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts.
