“The struggle to realize and to express my nature is my life’s meaning.” — Erica Rutherford

Erica Rutherford: Her Lives and Works accompanies a career-spanning retrospective exhibition of this multidisciplinary Canadian artist and transgender pioneer.

An artist, actor, filmmaker, farmer, teacher, and writer, Erica Rutherford’s remarkably multifaceted career took her across several countries and continents before settling on Prince Edward Island in the 1970s. There she established herself as a painter and printmaker, using art to engage in a reflection on gender construction and agency.

This remarkable retrospective includes reproductions of more than 60 paintings, prints, and drawings, as well as personal photographs. An interview with Rutherford’s widow, artist Gail Rutherford, accompanies critical essays by scholars and curators examining Rutherford’s stylistic evolution from dark semi-abstract collages to hard-edged Pop Art. Says editor and curator Pan Wendt, “In retrospect, Rutherford’s work represents a courageous and often solitary mission of working through questions that are only now part of the mainstream public discourse.”

Pan Wendt has been Curator of the Confederation Centre Art Gallery since 2010. Previously a freelance curator and critic, he has written for journals such as C Magazine, Fillip, and Arts Atlantic, as well as numerous catalogue and critical essays. His curated exhibitions include James Lee Byar: Letters from the World’s Most Famous Unknown Artist (2004, Mass MoCA); Colleen Wolstenholme: A Divided Room (2007, Confederation Centre Art Gallery); Funkaesthetics (2008, Justina M. Barnicke Gallery); Free Parking, Quotation, and Hank Bull: Connexion (2011, 2013, and 2015, Confederation Centre Art Gallery).

Pan Wendt's profile page