Arabella Campbell


Arabella Campbell is a Canadian artist based in Vancouver, British Columbia. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from the University of British Columbia in 1996, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Emily Carr University of Art and Design in 2002. She attended the San Francisco Art Institute from 1998 to 2000. She is represented by Catriona Jeffries Gallery and has exhibited locally, nationally, and internationally. She works out of a warehouse studio in False Creek Flats, Vancouver.

Early life

Born in Vancouver in 1973, Campbell grew up in remote Loughborough Inlet, in coastal British Columbia. Homeschooled for ten years, she later graduated from Shawnigan Lake School. Campbell studied painting in Southern France before returning to British Columbia to pursue a BA from the University of British Columbia.

Artistic practice

Writing for Artspeak, Cindy Richmond has described Campbell's work as a "confirmation of Minimalism's continued vitality. Her monochrome paintings, site-specific installations and sculptures allow her to explore issues implicit to a stripped-down aesthetic and examine the context in which art is experienced." However, Neil Campbell of Emily Carr University of Art and Design has argued that while "Arabella's paintings concern themselves with conceptual or formal strategies, I find my main response is to the aesthetic character of the work. The surfaces of her monochromes are rendered carefully, step by step, through a reverential application of paint. It's that observance that affects me." This, Neil Campbell argues, is intended on Arabella Campbell's part.
Campbell's "Physical Facts Series #6" won the 2007 RBC Canadian Painting Competition, which is the largest award for Canada's emerging artists. "Physical Facts Series #6" acknowledges "the support structure of the actual canvas," in a manner typical of her exploration of "the colours of gallery walls and the tools and methods of the painter." "Physical Facts Series #6" has been praised as achieving "intelligent results both critique and glorify the medium of painting."
Campbell's work for "Painting After Poverty" reconsidered "what is held to be peripheral to a work of art...in her attempt to calibrate from memory the precise shade of white paint used by three art institutions upon their walls."

Local impact

Campbell's work is a part of the Audain Art Museum's permanent collection of British Columbian art, and Square Process Paintings; Right Tilted, Left Tilted was featured as a part of Masterworks from the Audain Art Museum, which seeks to highlight 57 works in the museum's permanent collection as representative of "two hundred years of British Columbia's remarkable visual art."
Campbell has also been named as one of Vancouver's '7 New Painters' alongside Etienne Zack, Matthew Brown, Tim Gardner, Holger Kalberg, Elizabeth McIntosh, and Charlie Roberts.
Campbell herself has embraced a "location-based identification" with Vancouver and British Columbia, its spirit of "rigour and frontier freedom," and the artistic freedom afforded by its isolation from "any other substantial art centre."

Solo exhibitions

Campbell's work can be found in the permanent collections of the Audain Art Museum; Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery; Vancouver Art Gallery; West Vancouver Museum;, Oakville Galleries, Oakville, Ontario; Lodeveans Collection, UK; Rennie Collection, Vancouver; and the RBC Canadian Art Collection.

Awards and residencies

Further listening