Elaine Whittaker is a Toronto-based artist, creating mixed media sculpture and installations that intersect art, science and the environment. Based on extensive scientific research and investigation, her work incorporates an array of diverse materials: from pigmented wax to photo-based imagery, and mosquitoes to salt crystals.
Her artwork has been included in thematic exhibits examining water, blood, the genome, AIDS, cloning, climate change, and biotechnology. Recent solo exhibits have examined the aesthetics of disaster and coming pandemics in a climate-challenged world, and the process of grief through the science of nerves and electricity. Artworks have also been featured in literary and medical periodicals, a dance and science festival, a convention of medical and health practitioners, and been the subject of a number of poems.
Elaine has exhibited in galleries nationally and internationally, and received awards and grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Toronto Arts Council. She has been an invited participant in international residencies, a speaker at a conference on public health, and participated in workshops on biology and art. Her work is included in a number of private and corporate collections. Elaine holds a BFA in Visual Art from York University, Toronto, a Fine Arts diploma from the Toronto School of Art, and a BA in Anthropology from Carleton University, Ottawa.