Shary Boyle knows how to terrify. Her female figures, lovingly crafted in porcelain, are often disfigured: six fingers flash on one hand, five eyes dot a single forehead. One of her sculptures wears a sheet over her head tightened by a noose; another carries her chopped off head in her hands.

But what really makes Boyle's work unnerving isn't the surreal grotesquerie. It's how unsparing her vision is. With porcelain, paint, and in her more recent installation pieces, Boyle gets to the beating heart of what it means to be a woman: the skein of rage, doubt, desire, and wild slippery power through which we meet the world. Often, it isn't a comforting sight.


Burden, 2009. Courtesy of the artist and Jessica Bradley Art + Projects. Photo: Rafael Goldchain 2010.
What's encouraging, though, is that in an age where six-year-olds diet and Snooki is a household name, someone as fiery as Boyle has emerged as Canada's most successful young female artist. (And one of Canada's top artists, full-stop.) Her porcelain figurines are on display in the National Gallery of Canada; she's exhibited in galleries from Lethbridge to London to Luzern, Switzerland. She's collaborated with musicians like Feist and Christine Fellows, creating live drawing projections during their concerts.

Recently, Flesh and Blood, Boyle's landmark touring show of more than 30 pieces, made successful stops at Montreal's Galerie de l'UQUAM and the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto. (On June 17, it will debut at the Contemporary Art Gallery in Vancouver.)

"I want to create images that are alternatives to what you would see in the media," Boyle, 38, explains during an interview and portrait shoot at the AGO. "There have been these painful, massive shifts in women's rights, but it's almost like young women are going backwards. We get so lost, wanting to be loved, approved of, and desired by men. It can really hold us back."

Boyle's artistic vantage point allows her to avoid what she calls the "massive marketing tool" of female sexuality. "Musicians are incredibly pressured to be overtly sexual," she says, citing stars like Lady Gaga and Katy Perry. "As an artist, you're free. You never have to play that role."


Portrait of Shary Boyle for Hardly by Christopher Wahl.
Born in Scarborough, Boyle started drawing at an early age. ("Everyone draws. I just kept on drawing.") Her first artistic watershed occurred in Grade 8 when, on the advice of a guidance counsellor, she switched into an arts high school. "It took me an hour to get there and it was worth every minute," she remembers. "I came from a very conventional neighbourhood, where using drugs and alcohol was how kids rebelled. There was no creative rule-breaking." The Wexford Collegiate School of Arts was, by contrast, "an open school for self-expression, and I was so hungry for that."