Ira Hoffecker is a German-Canadian artist who immigrated to Canada in 2004 and is now based in Vancouver, Canada. She is an active member of the Federation of Canadian Artists.
Ira’s work has been exhibited in solo, duo and group exhibitions in Germany, England, Argentina and Canada.

Ira holds an MFA (2018) from Plymouth University (England) and Transart Institute, New York (USA) and a First Class Bachelor (Honours) in Fine Art (2015) from the University of Gloucestershire (England). She previously obtained a Diploma of Fine Arts (2013) from Vancouver Island School of Art, Victoria (Canada).

A book 'Imagined Landscapes' about Ira’s work with texts by Debora Alanna will be published by DCV Publishing House in German and English and is available in Europe (November 2026) and North America (as of February 2027).
ISBN „Imagined Landscapes“ German version: 978-3-96912-283-9
ISBN „Imagined Landscapes“ English version: 978-3-96912-284-6

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

Artist Statement:

My paintings explore the shifting boundary between abstraction and representation through organic form, color, memory, and imagined space. I am interested in how experiences remain within us—not always as complete narratives, but as sensations, fragments, gestures, and emotional traces. I extend remembered natural forms into abstracted environments and dreamlike landscapes, using depth, line, and layering to create movement and spatial ambiguity.
My process begins with close observation. I study and interpret organic materials, drawing inspiration from gardens, plants, landscapes, and the forms I encounter in nature.
In my recent series, Imagined Landscapes, I do not aim to replicate plants or real-world scenery. I work without photographic references in the studio and rely instead on memory and imagination. Observed forms are altered, simplified, extended, and combined until they become part of an invented visual world. Plant-inspired shapes inhabit environments that move between the familiar and the unknown, interrupting, softening, and rebalancing the underlying structure.
My physical relationship with painting has become increasingly important. I work intuitively, responding to the canvas through movement and gesture. The body participates in the creation of the image, allowing remembered sensations to emerge through color, line, rhythm, and composition. Especially in my new big paintings I use the

whole body in dance like movements to see what memories the body holds.
I think of these paintings as places of presence and possibility. They do not depict existing landscapes but create environments in which memory and imagination can take visible form. I invite viewers to enter these spaces with their own histories and associations, allowing each painting to remain open, uncertain, and continually becoming.