Eryn Foster is a Canadian interdisciplinary artist who lives and works in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Born and raised in small-town Ontario, she spent her childhood in Bancroft and her youth in Orillia. She has also spent time living and wandering around Montreal, Toronto, Algonquin Park, New England, Vancouver, the Yukon Territory, and Sackville, New Brunswick.
Foster studied at Concordia University (Montreal) where she received her B.F.A. and the University of Guelph, where she received her Master of Fine Arts. She has also studied documentary film at Capilano University in Vancouver. For over 15 years she has been actively exhibiting her work as well as participating in various creative projects as artist, curator, project organizer and filmmaker. In the past decade, her work has mostly been focused on projects that involve a combination of visual phenomena, social experiences and community-based art interactions. More recently she has shifted her practice back to the studio, and is now working on a large-scale/long-term project involving a hybrid of drawing and analog/digital photo processes.
Eryn Foster has previously been the recipient of several grants and awards from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council and Arts Nova Scotia (formerly NS Department of Tourism Culture and Heritage). Since the 90's she has participated in artist residencies at the Vermont Studio Centre, the MacDowell Arts Colony (US), the Banff Centre for the Arts, the Centre for Arts Tapes (Halifax), Point Pleasant Park (Halifax), and Struts Artist Run Centre in Sackville, New Brunswick, and La Cité internationale des Arts (through the Canada Council's International Residency Program).
For more than a decade, Foster has worked as part-time faculty at NSCAD University in Halifax. Here she has taught courses within the divisions of Fine Arts, Foundation Studies and Continuing Education. She has also worked as the Program Director for the Yukon School of Visual Arts in Dawson City (2010-2012) and as the Director of Eyelevel Gallery in Halifax (2005-2009).
In addition to her work in the visual arts, Foster is also co-directing and producing Celestial Queer, a feature length documentary about the animator, artist and activist James MacSwain with her collaborator Sue Johnson.
