Artist Biography
Jonathan Creese is a Trinidadian visual artist, currently based in Calgary AB. He graduated in 2025 with distinction from Alberta University of the Arts, Calgary AB with a Bachelor of Fine Art in Fibre and a minor in Print Media. He has exhibited works in solo exhibitions at the Prairie Crocus Gallery, Calgary AB and the Art Society of Trinidad and Tobago, Federation Park TTO. Additionally, he has exhibited extensively in group exhibitions, with Other Horizons: AUArts x SMFA Exchange Exhibition at The School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts, Boston MA and Not so Mini 2024 at Alberta Printmakers, Calgary AB being most recent. In 2025 he was the recipient of the AUArts Board of Governors Graduating Student Award and the Haystack Mountain School of Craft Studio Assistant Fellowship.
Artist Statement
I am a visual artist, making work referencing societal hybridisation with an interest in cultural interrogation, documentation, visual exploration of analytical research, and material and systems innovation. My work challenges the internal and external perceptions of belonging to a particular space, particularly in relation to spaces and cultures that are expereinceing the processes of creolisation. I use the languages of textile surface design, printmaking, sculpture, and installation to acctualise conceptual ideas which often draw from the colonial history of the West Indian geopolitical space, in an attempt to contextualise current realities which define its culture as a microcosm of a wider global cultural understanding. I have an interest in art acting as a means of progressing knowledge and thought in viewers through its manifestation as a forerunner for vernacular innovation and the legitimisation of cultural soverignity in an ever globalising world.
