ARTIST INTERVIEW
APRIL WINTER
April Winter is a photographer living on a small island on the West coast of Canada. She primarily focuses on taking self-portraits shot on film in her studio. She builds little sets and makes her own props and costumes to create tableaux like worlds, exploring themes such as space, utopia and isolation. Website: www.aprilwinter.com IG: @aprilbluewinter
Tell us a bit about yourself... I'm originally from Hamilton, Ontario, in Canada, when it was just a run-down industrial city without much cultural spark. I moved to St. Catharines (near Niagara Falls) at age 15 to attend a boarding school, where I had the most wonderful art teacher, then moved to Toronto to attend OCADU. In 2015, my husband, dog, and I hitchhiked west, where we still find ourselves today. I live on Mayne Island, a small southern gulf island with 1,000 permanent residents. The residents are mostly retirees looking for a quiet life. I love the quiet island life, when I can find it. Don't let small towns fool you, though; gossip runs wild, forest parties run wilder, and sometimes it seems like the island never sleeps. My guilty pleasure is having copious hours of quiet alone time, but having such lively characters around can be inspiring. Which is also why I chose my day job to be so different than my creative side. I co-own a marine and diving business maintaining the island's marine equipment. It gives me time to reset my creative mind, keeps me active and inspired. I've always been creative, but so are most children. Maybe the difference is that my family is very creative in different ways and has always been extremely supportive of my creativity. My father makes miniature sets of run-down cityscapes with graffiti and scrap cars, my mother has a passion for fashion and landscape design, my grandmother is a musician and loves interior design, and my grandfather is a portrait painter. PAGE 10 | THE PURPOSEFUL MAYONNAISE
