| ARTIST BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH: | Neil Fiertel is a sculptor and digital painter whose work explores his ongoing fascination with the human figure and form. His large-scale sculptures are earthy and almost enduring, much like time and earth itself, and he sculpts clay in a manner that, when fired, invites the viewer to touch and feel. He creates figures that are freed from Modernist structure and that are not necessarily anatomical, proportional, or analytical; rather, they can be considered more like anatomical abstraction.
Fiertel continues this exploration of the human figure in his digital paintings, where he eliminates the background elements in his images to leave the human figure floating in space. Fiertel’s approach lends an astrophysical element to his work, and he is interested in bringing the beauty of the human figure into the context of the cosmos itself.
Fiertel graduated with a BSc from the University of Chicago, a BA in Sculpture from the University of Miami, and an MFA in Sculpture and Photography from Florida State University. He has exhibited his large sculptures and digital photography in solo and group shows throughout Alberta. Fiertel lives in Spruce Grove, and is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Art and Design at the University of Alberta, where he taught for over thirty years.
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