Caitlin Wilson
Caitlin Wilson (she/her) is an ADHD printmaker working in Moncton, New Brunswick, the traditional unceded territory of the Wolastoqiyik and Mi’Kmaq Peoples. She has a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Mount Allison University (2008) and moved to Moncton to become a member of Atelier Imago printmaking studio in 2009. In 2018, Caitlin established Maplewood Studio, from which she teaches art lessons, prepares her “Artventures” art and eco-tourism day trips, and hosts events.
In 2022, Caitlin and her partner Natt Cann repurposed a former church into studio space to house Maplewood Studio and work on their creative practices. Sometimes they collaborate for installations and workshops, most recently with the interactive installation, Habitation, as seen at Third Shift Art Festival.
In 2023, Caitlin completed her first artist residency, creating a project titled Migratoire at Académie Ste-Famille as part of the Riopelle Dialogues. This spring, she completed East Coast Pony, a group of prints and field sketches created with funding from ArtsNB and exhibited at Imago. Caitlin loves community engagement, working with Imago, local schools, and organizations such as Friends of Fundy to offer workshops and demonstrations in printmaking and other creative techniques. She can be found in her free time with her horse Oliver or exploring the wilderness with her sketchbook and her dog Sadie.
What led you to become an artist?
My older sister and I were super artsy growing up, so when she went to Mount Allison University to pursue a Fine Arts degree, it felt natural to follow her when I was ready to start school two years later. I fell in love with printmaking and moved to Moncton a year after graduating to become a member of Imago printmaking studio.
It honestly took me a long time to become an artist, or at least, to be able to pursue art full-time. I was a server for fifteen years, making art on the side but not pursuing an arts career because I didn’t yet understand how to work with my disability. I loved serving, but still felt like I was in limbo, and wouldn’t be fulfilled until I started using my degree. Eventually, I turned my living room into a studio and started teaching lessons on my days off from the restaurant. In 2020, the pandemic pushed me a little further out of the food industry and I started building up my client base. I figured out how my brain works and how to negotiate my symptoms, but I still wanted to do more with my budding career. In 2021, I was lucky to be able to participate in ArtsLinkNB’s CATAPULT Arts Accelerator program, which gave me the tools I need to push my business to a full-time endeavour.
My local art community has helped me so much along the way. The Art Shack has always promoted my lesson programs, Imago has provided me countless work and education opportunities, and my arts friends have always been supportive, sharing opportunities with me and encouraging me to pursue them.
What led you to print making?
I learned printmaking at Mount Allison, and it didn’t take long for me to start spending all my time in the printshop. Dan Steeves and Erik Edson made the studio a safe haven and a fantastic learning environment.
There’s something about the routine of printmaking that just gets me. It’s a complicated medium, with countless techniques and lots of aggressive learning curves, but that’s what keeps it interesting. As an ADHDer, I have executive function issues that make it difficult to perceive how to get from step A to step B. In the printshop, the steps feel easy because each technique has its own formula. If you follow that formula and stick to the routine, your image will work. Feeling confident in these routines allows me to experiment with combining techniques and explore in a way that wouldn’t be accessible to me in other mediums. The best part is editioning: the part when you use your matrix (the thing you use to make the print, such as a stamp or stencil) to create multiple, identical images that will later be signed and numbered as an edition. In other mediums such as painting or drawing, you only get that magical feeling of completing a piece of artwork once, but in printmaking, I get to experience it each time I pull a print in my edition. This is especially rewarding for someone like me whose brain doesn’t naturally produce enough dopamine.
How did your training and experience help you to create and innovate in your artistic practice?
My Bachelor of Fine Arts degree and the CATAPULT course were essential to help me build and establish my art practice, but the experiences I’ve had in my community have made a major impact too. Imago hosts plenty of workshops, and I attend as many as I can. My partner and I go to openings, connect with other artists, and go on artsy day trips to galleries and studios, which keeps me inspired and perpetually thinking about new ideas. Working with my students helps me revisit creative foundations, experiment with techniques, and pushes me to try things that I might not have considered for my personal practice. The training and experiences I’ve had – and continue to have – offer the inspiration, confidence, and technical ability I need to pursue new ideas and grow as an artist.
What stimulates you most about your practice?
I love editioning prints in the studio, spending afternoons field sketching, finishing a project and seeing people interact with it. What stimulates me most, however, is my students. I’m a great believer in leading by example, and I want my students to see that it is possible to have a career in the arts. Even when I’m overwhelmed and discouraged from writing applications, I keep going, because on top of wanting to do the thing I’m applying for, I want my students to see that being an artist is a viable career option.
What motivates your creativity?
Nothing gets me into art mode like spending time out in nature, talking shop with my friends, and seeing works I connect with in gallery exhibitions.
How has living and working in New Brunswick helped and/or inspired you on your journey?
My work is about sense of place and seeking relationships with nature. I create with the intention of facilitating emotional connections between people and nature, encouraging the viewer to reflect on their eco-footprint and consider what roles they can play in conservation. New Brunswick’s vast and unique biodiversity, paired with its travel accessibility as a smaller province, makes it a treasure trove for an artist like me who thrives on field work. As a resident of a province subjected to deforestation and other non-sustainable industry, I feel especially compelled to create and share this work.
The arts community in this province has certainly helped with this journey as well. With resources like ArtsLinkNB and ArtsNB, support from Imago and The Art Shack, and the talented local artists I have the privilege of calling friends, there’s no shortage of support and inspiration in my creative life. I feel like being a member of Imago got me in with the cool kids, not only connecting me with other printmakers, but also giving me a step-up into the radiant Francophone arts community. I’m so thankful to be bilingual so I can engage with some of the coolest artists in the province and accept work opportunities in my second language. The arts scene here has the same small-town vibe that our communities exhibit, where you always run into someone you know and there’s never a shortage of helping hands.
How does your creative process unfold as you create an artwork?
I start by going out into nature. I'll hop in my car, lace up my hiking boots or strap on my snowshoes and depart in pursuit of intimate places and open vistas. I'll choose a space I can feel; one that activates my senses and pulls me into it. I’ll embrace the hyperfocus and time blindness that are symptoms of my ADHD, completely immersing myself in my surroundings. I'll sit on the ground to document with pencil and watercolour; chosen because they are gentle, immediate, and portable. These field sketches give me time to reflect in nature, questioning my place here while connecting with my surroundings through observation.
Sometimes I swap the wilderness for a field of horses, interacting with them before documenting their features and dispositions. I’ll reflect on how my family history as a descendant of European settlers and historic ranch owners affects my connection to both the horses and the land.
Select field drawings are reworked into prints at the studio, where I combine woodcut and intaglio printmaking techniques to create an image that further delves into the feel of these spaces, allowing me to emphasize poignant aspects of my experience.
The result is a body of work: small pencil and watercolour sketches paired with prints rich in woodgrain texture that invite the viewer to consider their own sense of place and reflect on the relationship they want to have with nature.
Why do you think it's important to make art and pursue an artistic career?
The fulfillment I get from creating work and sharing it with others, teaching young artists and watching them grow, being included in an amazing group of creatives and doing something I love every day is something I wouldn’t be able to find in any other career. I’ve had to adapt my approach to work with my disability (applications are still a nightmare and sometimes writing them requires floor time), but I have a job that genuinely makes my life better and allows me to make a positive impact on the world around me.
What have you learned about yourself and the artistic community through your work?
SO MUCH! But my favourite lesson is that we never stop learning.
I grew up riding horses and have noticed that every budding equestrian reaches a point where they think they know everything. We’ve all been there, and we’ve all been humbled when we learn the hard way that we only know enough to make things dangerous.
We never stop learning as artists, either. Thankfully, we don’t need to flip through the air off a horse, break a fence and land upside-down in front of our Dad at our first horse show to figure that out. We just need to be open to try new things, ask questions and share what we do know with one another so we can keep growing and improving as we go along.
The benefit of this process is that as you learn, art gets more fun. Your community builds. You have adventures, both in and out of the studio. Your confidence grows, and so do your ideas. Eventually, after thinking you only sort of know what you’re doing for the longest time, you’re able to deliver when someone asks for help. While this cycle can be applied to so much more than the arts, knowing and applying it to my career has facilitated so much growth in my work, career, and (hopefully) my community.
What do you think is the impact of artists' work on communities and the province as a whole?
Art is a cultural staple, giving us a sense of identity by connecting us through stories and ideas. Being active in the arts community gives us inspiration, connects us with like-minded people, and allows us to see the world from other people’s perspectives.
Describe what you are most proud of in your career.
Learning to write applications, because for years I would either call my sister crying or end up in a ball of doom on the floor whenever I tried to write them! Eventually I stopped trying to.
I love my brain, but it seriously malfunctions sometimes, and no one gave me the manual for it until 2020. The struggles I encountered from not understanding my disability essentially put my career on hold until I learned how to identify and negotiate my symptoms. I’m so thankful that I was able to lean on my art friends while I learned how to properly cope with ADHD, and that I was able to rebuild my foundations in the CATAPULT Arts Accelerator program. I’m so proud that I was able to adapt and create Maplewood Studio along the way, but what I’m most proud of is that I can finally write applications. It takes me twice as long as it probably should, and every now and then I miss a deadline because the overwhelm hits a little too hard or my time management issues get the better of me, but I don’t even care because I can do it. Every time I send out an application, I get this thrill of accomplishment from knowing I’m capable of doing something that felt impossible up until a few years ago.
What advice would you give to emerging artists?
Your work is valid, your ideas will grow, and you will get to where you want to be so long as you persevere. Self-love, baby steps, hard work, and healthy boundaries are essential. Take the time to learn and develop a solid business foundation. And for the love of baby kittens, make sure you get paid fairly! You got this!
