Gathie Falk was born in Alexander, Man. in 1928. Raised Mennonite, Falk spent her childhood drawing, and attended Saturday morning art classes at the Winnipeg Art Gallery.
Falk trained to become an elementary teacher, and it was in the Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia that she began to
seriously pursue painting and ceramics.
In 1965, Falk started working as a full-time artist, and quickly received critical acclaim for her charming approach to conceptual art. Her ceramic sculptures often depict carefully rendered commonplace items, including clothes, food and plants, arranged in groups of multiples or presented in humorous compositions.
In the late 1960s, Falk began experimenting with performance art. Like her paintings and sculptures, many of these performances centred around repetition and the mundane, exploring the boundary between fine art and everyday life.
Falk continues to produce art and is represented in many private and public Canadian art collections. She was awarded the Order of Canada in 1997 and the Governor General's Award in Visual Arts in 2003.
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