Colleen Heslin is from Toronto and currently lives in Vancouver. Heslin was the winner of the 2013 RBC Painting Competition and her work has been exhibited and published in Canada, the US, and Europe. She works predominantly with textiles and quilting to create abstract compositions.

Colleen Heslin pushes the limits of painting; it’s definitions, classifications and hierarchies, disrupting medium-based expectations. In this work, at first glance it appears to be a typical abstract painting, with geometric forms providing a sense of space. Once the viewer is closer to the work, you notice that the work is composed of various panels of painted and dyed fabric that are cut, reassembled, and sewn to create a forceful geometric canvas. The artist fuses the ideas of craft and painting, terms that are typically thought to be fully separate and with hierarchical differences, in the completed composition.