Alexandra Haeseker

Alexandra Haeseker RCA (born 1945) is a Canadian painter, print maker, and installation artist, based in Calgary, Alberta.

[2][5][6] In the 1980s, influenced by Edweard Muybridge's studies of a young amputee, she used the image of a legless boy hovering over a landscape in which dogs were tethered.

[3] In 2021, a detail of a work by Haeseker was included in chapter five, Specimens from Another Time, in Future Possible: an Art History of Newfoundland and Labrador, by Mireille Eagan and other authors, published by The Rooms Corporation and Goose Lane editions, New Brunswick.

The city of Calgary Business Revitalization Zone commissioned her mural Big Catch in 1990, located at 17th Avenue at Mount Royal Village.

[10] In 2018, she created THEM for the city of Public Art Calgary Transit, BRT Stations, which showed 20 wild creatures found near urban centres in larger-than-life installations on metal utility boxes.

They sometimes involve her researching Swarm behaviour in which she is deeply interested or the relationship of the exhibiting venue`s site with the geography and ecology of the surrounding area, thus demonstrating her knowledge and concern for the eco-system in huge, brightly-colored experimental print installations.

To create her installations, Haeseker combines traditional methods and the latest adaptations of technology, teaming with one of her longtime Corporate partnerships, The PattisonOutdoor Group (Canada’s largest billboard company).

She chose Ichthyology and produced imagery drawn from deep sea lifeforms that were fitted to the windows of the Russian Academy of Science (where fish fossils are displayed).

[15][14][10] In 2009, Haeseker also participated in Pendulum/ Pendula with her long-time friend and colleague John Hall, a show of collaborative realistic paintings which they had done both in Canada and Mexico from 1992 to 1998.

[10][3][18] In 2020, at the Edinburgh Printmakers at Castle Mills Contemporary in Scotland, she installed The Botanist's Daughter, large experimental print works which looked at nature close-up and took inspiration from the resources of hand-pulled engravings found in Museum and Library collections, illustrating botanical and entomological themes.

[22] In 2022, the Vernon Public Art Gallery held her exhibition Fleurs du Mal: Alexandra Haeseker, which as in her Edinburgh Printmakers show, recorded her concern about the environment through large-scale images of the insect and plant world, with an added video and artist's books.

Haeseker with one of her installation works, depicting a spider in a forest
Haeseker working on her piece Spinner (2005; left). The public art installation created for Fondation Derouin in Val-David, Québec, Canada (right).
Haeseker with one of her installation works
Haeseker with her work Botanist's Daughter (2020). EP Castle Millworks, Edinburgh, Scotland.