Ursula Hirländer
London, Ontario
Abstract Realist Artist based in London, ON, born in Graz Austria. Graduated at the Milan Art Institute in 2020, member of the Professional Artist Association.
Message
Ursula Hirländer was born and raised in Graz, Austria, and is now based in London, Ontario. She is a mixed-media artist whose work moves between expressive portraiture, animals, botanicals, and abstraction.
Her work is rooted in the conviction that artistic expression holds the power to reveal personal truth, awaken feminine wisdom, and reconnect us to the quiet magic of community and belonging. Across her paintings, Ursula explores creativity as a return to inner knowing, emotional honesty, and the deeper threads that connect us to nature, and one another.
Before fully turning toward painting, Ursula trained in the heritage craft of millinery, completing a three-year apprenticeship before becoming head of the millinery department at the United Theatres in Graz. For ten years, she designed and created hats and masks for the performing arts, developing a deep sensitivity to form, texture, character, and transformation.
Her artistic path was recognized early. At eighteen, Ursula won first prize in a province-wide art competition in Austria, which led to the honour of exhibiting her work in the Vatican City State and being featured in the Vatican newspaper.
After moving to Canada in 1986, Ursula devoted many years to raising her two children. Later in life, the pull toward painting became impossible to ignore. She completed her formal art education through the Milan Art Institute and returned fully to her creative practice.
Today, Ursula works from her London, Ontario studio, a creative sanctuary where she spends much of her time painting and developing new bodies of work. When she is not in the studio, she spends time with her children on the west coast of British Columbia or returns to Austria to reconnect with family, customs, and the roots that continue to shape her work.
Statement
My art is a pursuit of freedom, a visual practice of self-realization, spiritual exploration, and connection to something both ancient and deeply personal. Each piece becomes an offering shaped by emotion, energy, and the unseen threads that tether us to the sacred.
Rooted in the spirit of my heritage, my work is guided by intuition and a reverence for ritual. I layer textures, natural pigments, gold leaf, spray paint, and bold, instinctive marks to build visual landscapes that feel both wild and intentional. These materials allow me to move within the liminal space between the physical and the mystical, between what is visible and what is felt.
Creating is a sacred act for me. It is how I remember who I am, how I access the unseen, and how I move through shadow into light. My process is fluid and instinctive, a conversation between chaos and form, between what is known and what is still emerging.
Through each painting, I invite the viewer to pause, feel, and reconnect with their own inner wildness and with the ancient rhythms that continue to pulse beneath the surface of modern life.