BIRDIE THALER

Birdie Thaler can be contacted at 

birdiethaler@birdiethaler.com

or

birdiethaler@gmail.com

Please visit her on Instagram

https://www.instagram.com/birdiethaler/

A native of Cleveland, Ohio in the USA, Birdie Thaler has been living in Malmö in southern Sweden since 2004. Her studio is a stone's throw from the sea, where Copenhagen is just across the bay, with the Glyptotek museum and her beloved drawing group. She also teaches at a Folkhögskola in the Rosengård neighborhood of Malmö.

Birdie has been living in Europe since graduating from art school in 1987. One studio residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris turned into two, then three, and finally 16 years living in France. She mostly lived and worked in Belleville  in Paris, making paintings and drawings, as well as translating and subtitling films and teaching. 

International stints have ranged from travels throughout Europe and New Zealand, India, Senegal, and Egypt to residencies in ceramics at the Europees Keramisch Werkcentrum in ’s-Hertogenbosch and in print and bookmaking at Knust in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, to an apprenticeship at Sotoen Pottery in Shigaraki, Japan, and a workshop at the Banff Centre for the Arts in Alberta, Canada.

Solo shows include an exhibition at the Aeglageret in Holbaek and Roda Tårn in Slagelse, Denmark; Gallerie Divergences, Paris; Galleri Kvarnby, Österlen; Ibro Galleri, Malmö; and group shows at Ursuline College, Cleveland; Limhamns Konsthall; Malmö; Aracanthe, Paris; Ann Nathan Gallery, Chicago; Grand Palais, Paris; William Busta Gallery, Cleveland; Moore College of Art, Philadelphia and in cultural centers in France, North America and the Netherlands.

Birdie Thaler's work is represented in the MOMA Book Arts collection in New York, the Walker Arts Center in Minneapolis and in collections in North America, Europe and Asia.

Birdie Thaler’s artwork is peopled with real and imaginary portraits of family, friends, and herself, as well as of dogs, birds, insects, plant-life, patterns and architectural spaces. Her current work consists mostly of gouache and acrylic paintings and drawings on canvas or paper. She also makes prints, books, ceramics and sculpture.

Art and artists that influence her work include old stalwarts like Matisse, Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Picasso, Dürer, Munikata, Hokusai, Velasquez and Bronzino, along with Persian and Indian miniatures, Fayoum portraits, Japanese folk arts, African printed fabrics, medieval woodcuts, David Hockney, Egon Shiele, Louise Bourgeois, Philip Guston, as well as one handful of fellow artists at the Cleveland Institute of Art, where she got a Bachelor of Fine Arts in ceramics and printmaking in 1982, and the other handful at Alfred University, where she received a Master of Fine Arts in sculpture and ceramics in 1987.