John Hartman is one of Canada’s preeminent painters. He is known for his rich, vibrant depictions of the country’s most iconic landscapes. Hartman’s prolific practice includes oil painting, watercolour, pastel, and printmaking.

Hartman has exhibited extensively in Canada as well as in New York, New Orleans and London, England. His work was the subject of three widely acclaimed travelling museum exhibitions, Many Lives Mark This Place (2020 - 2024) organized and circulated by the Woodstock Art Gallery, CITIES (2007-2010), and Big North (1999-2001). Collections include the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, the New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans and the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Halifax. In 2024, Hartman received his appointment to the Order of Canada.

Laura Jane Petelko, born in Toronto in 1972, is a Canadian photographic artist renowned for her emotive sincerity and intimate subject matter. Her artistic journey began in Vancouver during the early 2000s, where she gained recognition for her series "28", which explored tender and intimate themes of a friends personal recovery. Additionally, Petelko collaborated with women in her series "Listen", empowering them to convey their own powerful messages on their skin.

Beyond her personal projects, Petelko honed her craft by mastering printing techniques for acclaimed photographic artists such as Harmony Korine, Kelly Wood, and Ed Rusche. She was represented by Vancouver's prestigious "Third Avenue Gallery" before returning to her roots in Toronto.

With a deep love of materials, Johanna renders gestural scenes that exists at the intersection of colour, landscape and emotion. By painting the world she wants to see, Reynolds' work allows natural systems - earth, water, vegetation and sky - to maintain their full circle existence without destructive human interference. This work aims to hint at something familiar, yet often remains open-ended to allow the viewer’s imagination to complete the story.

Career milestones include a 2018 solo exhibition in Sweden with Nordic Stories Contemporary Art, and Air Canada’s acquisition of four large works, entitled Passages for their permanent collection, currently hanging at LaGuardia, NY. In 2020/21, Johanna was approached to paint a piece for singer/songwriter, Jann Arden. For this bespoke project led by Tommy Smythe of T.O.M. Interior Design, Johanna made some of her own plant based pigments for this large scale commission.

Johanna studied Art History and Studio Arts at Concordia University in Montreal. Her work can be found in private and corporate collections internationally, and continues to gain attention in Toronto where she works and lives with her husband and two children.

Julie Himel carries a Diploma of Fine Art from Langara College in Vancouver, a Bachelor of Fine Art Honours Degree from York University, and a Graduate Diploma from the Toronto School of Art. Her award winning paintings can be found in private collections internationally, public collections including The University of Calgary, Calgary’s Civic Art Collection, Westfield State University, the Armenian Centre Art Collection Canada, and several corporate collections nationwide. She is represented by Foster/White, Stremmel and Tyger Tyger Galleries in three United States, and in Canada by Oeno Gallery.

Toronto born painter Howard Lonn graduated from OCAD in the early 1980’s. Following his studies he lived and worked in Toronto, Florence, Montreal, Barcelona and Berlin. He has exhibited in Toronto, Montreal, New York, Barcelona, and Madrid and shown with Sable-Castelli, Nicholas Metivier and Birch Contemporary. His work is in such collections as Art Gallery of Ontario, McMaster Museum of Art, Art Gallery of Hamilton, Sun Life of Canada, Royal Bank of Canada, Torys, Toronto, Encana Calgary, TD Bank, Toronto as well as private collections in Toronto, Montreal, Barcelona, Madrid and New York.

Much of Lonn’s work over the last ten or so years has been described as architectural in their forms and structure. The forms deployed in more recent paintings possess an architectonic sense of scale and structure, however, free of the burden of giving us an architectural image. Lonn’s ambition for current work in progress includes eluding a consonant pictorial resolution providing the identifiable thing. As Ihor Holubizky wrote in his essay Howard Lonn: Signals Back the World (2012): “In the end a structure necessary for his painting appears, and makes it knowable, yet not to describe, but to propose.”

Kristin Sjaarda is a photographic, textile, and ceramics artist based in Toronto, Ontario, where she lives with her husband and three sons. She attended The Colorado Institute of Art in Denver, Colorado on a full tuition scholarship, graduating in 1994. Known for lush large-scale still-life images of local flora and fauna from her garden and urban environment, she frequently collaborates with The Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto to include real specimens of birds in her arrangements. She has also designed silk scarves using her imagery, taught workshops on floral arrangement and natural-light still-life photography and designed her ceramics for use in her photos. Sheridan College and the Ontario Science Centre have invited Kristin to lecture on the intersection of art and ecology. Her work has been collected internationally and a select portfolio has been published in CandyFloss Magazine (2021), Women United Art Magazine (2023) and Create Magazine (2023). In September 2022 she was an Artist in Residence at Kingsbrae Gardens in New Brunswick, Canada, and in October, 2022 Smokestack Gallery in Hamilton, Ontario hosted her first Solo Show.

My paintings are based on memory and experience, where superfluous detail is eventually eliminated to reveal essential character. This is partly because the strongest memories have salient parts that endure. Shape, colour, light, are reduced to their most basic elements, either because of the passage of time eroding needless detail, or the immediate flash of memory that only registers distinctive parts. Either way, the work seeks to resolve how the remaining elements are as true as possible through colour, shape, personal projection etc. Once these few elements are certain, they may be used to build and support the painting. Once the painting is begun, those observed elements become part of a larger synthesis, supporting and responding to both the internal sensibilities of the painting in that moment, and my own personal projection. This projection is a combination of both formal interests and personal memory; the work is the direct result of very immediate and indelible experiences set out in paint. The included work is drawn from experience at sea and its enigmatic and immense power.

Nancy Friedland is an artist investigating narrative, the family album, landscape, light and darkness in her work. After moving away from her roots in photography, Friedland began exploring these preoccupations through paint. Sometimes she conjures a romantic fairytale from whole cloth, but mostly she works with her own photographs or family snapshots as source material. She is drawn to the magic that happens in the flawed translation from one medium to the next.

After studying photography at the Ontario College of Art and Design, Friedland completed her MFA at the Rochester Institute of Technology as a Sir Edmund Walker Scholar. She has received grants from the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts, and has exhibited across Canada, the US and internationally. She lives and works in Toronto.

In a landscape where art often walks a tightrope between self-expression and societal commentary, Ken Gangbar occupies a space all his own—a space punctuated by timeless themes, profound intimacy, and an unyielding sense of exploration.

The relationship between artist, art, and audience is central to understanding Ken’s work. While he may not be deeply entrenched in the conventional art scene, he remains incredibly attuned to the complex emotional landscapes that his work inspires in those who encounter it. His art serves not merely as an object of aesthetic appreciation but as a catalyst, igniting a transformative experience that reaches into the soul, asking compelling questions and offering a space for introspection and dialogue.

Stewart Jones' work focuses mainly on the sidelines of the city and the relationships of light and shadows within the urban environment. His subjects are the often overlooked, seemingly unimportant places and moments within the cities he paints. His unique compositions - the unexpected angles and perspectives, the shadows and light between buildings - are described with a passionate and confident touch, making these spaces instantly familiar, and yet new and exciting all at once.

Stew holds a 4 Yr Associate Diploma in Drawing & Painting from the Ontario College of Art Toronto (1995) and graduated from Sheridan College’s Classical Animation program Oakville (2001).

Jones is an active founding member of The Canadian Art Collective and City Field North Shore painting collectives and his work can be found in several corporate collections nationwide. He has been an instructor at the Baxter Arts Centre, Bloomfield ON since 2019.

Joel Loblaw is a landscape designer / painter dividing his time between Toronto and Meaford, Ontario. His early work was within the classic Canadian landscape tradition, but his style has quickly evolved to be an abstract interpretation of the landscape’s shapes and forms.

Joel’s paintings reflect his love for colour and composition and feature various materials and textures such as oil paint, burnt plywood and encaustic.

Joe’s desire is for you to view his work and be uplifted and transported into nature. Joe’s work has been featured in numerous solo art shows and exhibitions in Toronto.

Christina Gapic is a Toronto based artist and visual storyteller driven and inspired by the beauty of meaningful connection & human relationships. Her photographs are honest and revealing, captivating and compassionate, intimate and heartfelt. They tell a deeper story. Christina graduated with a BAA from Ryerson University. With 20+ years professional experience, paired with her strong intuition, she engages in a process of quiet observation, curious exploration and magical discovery.

Joe graduated from the Ontario College of Art in 1995 with a specialization in illustration from the commercial design department. After OCA, he began freelancing as an illustrator while continuing to paint. Painting quickly became his sole occupation.

Joe’s portfolio is comprised of a variety of scenic imagery, and is currently focused on waterscapes. Drawn to shorelines, beaches, lakes, oceans and streams, Joe uses water imagery to depict the dichotomy between movement and immobility. A detailed understanding of light’s ability to create color, shadow and tone is utilized to set mood in each painting. Whether the focus is cold, warm, tranquil or angry, waters’ magnificence strikes the viewer and an emotional response is evoked. This is due, in part, to the large scale of the work.

From a distance, the viewer is drawn towards what appears to be a photograph. Upon closer inspection, brushstrokes are revealed and the observer is made aware of the meticulous layers of brushwork, resulting in the illusion that the viewer is still for an instant, at the waters’ edge.

Anda  Kubis is a recognized Canadian abstract painter. By making artwork in both digital and traditional oil painting processes,  Anda aims to create a highly perceptual experience that provokes consciousness and promotes states of well-being.

With a BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and an MFA from York University,  Anda has been an art educator since 1992. She has taught studio and theory courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels at York University, the University of Lethbridge, and OCAD University. At OCAD U since 2000,  Anda has held administrative roles as the Chair of the Drawing and Painting Program, Associate Dean - Outreach and Innovation, and Chair - Criticism & Curatorial Practice & Cross-Disciplinary Studies. In 2021, she was the Interim Director/Dean of the Haliburton School of Art + Design at Fleming College. Currently in the role of Associate Professor at OCAD U, Anda happily teaches undergraduate and graduate students.

Anda Kubis has shown widely in North America and Europe. Her artwork is represented commercially in Canada by Bau-Xi Gallery in Toronto and Vancouver, Newzones Gallery of Contemporary Art in Calgary, and in the US by Merritt Gallery, Baltimore, MD, Washington DC, and Philadelphia, PA. Numerous public and private collections have acquired her work, including: ScotiaBank, Capital One, RBC, TD Bank, BMO Art Bank, and the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development.

David Marshak studied fine art an illustration at the Ontario College of Art and Design from 1989 to 1993 with his final year spent off campus in Florence, Italy. He worked briefly in illustration (and as waiter) before starting a full-time career in fine art with a focus on the landscape. From 1996 to 2014 he was a member of Drawnward, a collective of artists with shifting membership that travelled together. David has had many successful solo shows at galleries such as John Libby Fine Arts in Toronto, James Baird Gallery in Newfoundland, Local Colour in Flesherton and Roberts Gallery in Toronto. David has travelled widely through Newfoundland and the Arctic with travel company Adventure Canada, serving as artist in residence. His art is widely collected and is part of many private and corporate collections. A father of three children and husband to one wife, David lives and paints in Kimberley Ontario.

Chris has been making paintings since the mid nineties using the landscape and portrait as his primary subject. Interested in how repetitive patterns build form Chris continues to explore new processes and mediums. His current works are built from tens of thousands of drilled holes in painted panels.

Jeremy Down is a Canadian musician and artist, creating abstract paintings for over 30 years. 

His work investigates the relationship of colour and mark-making as an expression of the interweaving layers of life experience. Giving visual presence to the feeling of consciousness unfolding over time. 

Searching for a spiritual connection to nature, travelling and painting across the Canadian wilderness with the group DRAWNONWARD. on the Arctic tundra, the Selkirk alpine, and on lakeshores and both coastlines. 

in 2004 he built the SKIISL, an easel on skiis , ski-touring deep into the mountains, pushing the boundaries of adventure-painting. 

Jeremy was recently profiled in Mountain Life Magazine, is a recipient of an Ontario Arts Council grant, the Museum of New Award for Artistic Innovation , He has held residencies on the MS Explorer, MS Clipper, Baldface Catski Lodge, and Gibraltar Point Artscape. 

His work is held by Canadian Art Bank, Nelson BC museum, Scotiabank, Mattamy corp. collections, and has been shown and collected across Canada, and in the US. 

Jeremy currently splits his time living and painting on the shores of Georgian Bay Ontario, and Slocan Lake B.C. 

Alice Burton is an Honours Fine Arts graduate of York University in Toronto. 

Her works have been exhibited in a number of solo, group and juried Exhibitions in Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa and New York a well as in England, Europe and Columbia, South America.

She has presented her work at C2 Gallery, Stoke Hammond, UK; Audart, New York; The New Art Center, New York; the A.K. Collings Gallery, Port Hope ON; The Robert Macklin Gallery, Kingston ON; Han Art, Montreal Quebec; Teodora Gallery, Toronto; The Moore Gallery, Toronto; Galerie Jean-Claude Bergeron, Ottawa; and Yumart Gallery, Toronto. She has works are in private and corporate collections in North America and Europe.

There is a strong emphasis on colour, texture, line and composition in her work. She has concentrated on studies of the landscape for more than 20 years. Her imagery is forged by a combination of sketches, photography, computer generated enhancements and imagination. She particularly enjoys hovering in the space where subject matter recedes and paint becomes paint, recombining to form new images, some more representational to the viewer than others.

Over the past 20 years, Andrew has developed a unique style that distinguishes him from most contemporaries. Andrew's work has grown with an impressionistic flavour over time, evolving into large areas of colour, searching for harmony in light and shape within the subject matter. The exploration of capturing the moment has led his style to a more linear and more abstract modern approach described as 'post-impressionism meets the digital age. Andrew uses a thick application of paint, vivid colours, geometric forms and the distortion of shapes for dramatic effect, similar to a kaleidoscope or stained-glass window, which fragments an image and reassembles it in a new way. From the feeling of the landscape, he creates the illusion of depth and vibration throughout the painting. Andrew's works are both intricate and impressively simplistic. Arbitrary and yet consisting of grandiose beauty, channeling both modern and early Canadiana. His painting experiences have led to visiting every province and territory across Canada and countries such as Australia, Greenland and India. These travels and art collaborations have created a significant painting history and structured to Andrew's signature landscape paintings with a bold palette and formal application.

Gillian Frise is a Toronto-based artist who explores the sensuality of nature through sculpture, drawing, painting, performance and video. Her work depicts the blurred borders between bodies, our immersion in the animal menagerie, and the physical transformations that are only made possible through art. Of her paintings, she says, “Everything comes through the body, the lusts, the fears, the changes. I want to explore the place where you cross over, go from being to another, that shift that alters your life.”Frise’s recent exhibitions include solo shows at PMG Artscape Wychwood Barns Gallery and Drey Gallery in the spring of 2023. She has also exhibited at Show Gallery, Parentheses Gallery, Fran Hill Gallery, Toronto Outdoor Art Show, Paul Petro Multiples, TAFFI (Toronto Alternative Art Fair), and Lonsdale Gallery. She participated in the artist residency at the Klondike Institute of Art and Culture (KIAC), Dawson City, Yukon. She has received Ontario Arts Council and Toronto Arts Council Grants, and has won awards for drawing and watercolor in the Toronto Outdoor Art Show. Her work can be found in both private and public collections including the collection of Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP, and theGeorge Hartman Collection.

My paintings encapsulate a playful, energetic feeling of everyday moments in life , each embedded with their own personalities.

They are representations of my imagination, experiences, and memories which have been interpreted subconsciously into thoughts, colours and patterns and expressed onto the canvas in a representational or non-representational way for others to enjoy.

I paint both abstracts and landscapes in acrylics and oils currently preferring acrylics for larger canvases and oils for en plein air sketches and smaller canvases.

The orientation of my abstract paintings are not always know initially until the shapes and colours start to present themselves into a composition that I feel intuitively pleased with. I love the challenge that playing with colour presents – and am amazed at how a “feeling” or “mood” can be expressed through paint and chosen brushstrokes.

Julie Fader's paintings are bursting and energetic, connected and rhythmic shape-journeys that evoke a sense of both calm and chaos. As improvisational as they are methodical and precise. Her focused work reflects back, allowing a personal interpretation and connection.

Julie Fader is a Toronto-based multi-disciplinary artist. A painter, composer and musician.

Nell Nancy Ayotte is an artist and writer living on the unseeded territory of the Lək̓ʷəŋən peoples of the Songhees nation. Inspired by maximalist décor, ancestral ties, art of yesteryear and the ethereal, Nell’s work strives to reflect the nature of community, fluidity, divinity, mysticism and the self.

Nell’s work has been shown at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria and is a part of Rockslide Gallery’s permanent collection.

The imagined spaces are kaleidoscopic in nature and blend together imagery both real and imagined. The open faces are an invitation to dissolve into the artwork's world and imagine yourself gazing back at you.

 "Whether I'm making an abstract or representational piece, I'm feeling the thickness and thinness, the drag, smear, stroke, scrape and blend of colour. Every mark is a decision in composition, a tactile balance of tension and cohesion; a distillation of life with-in and with-out". 

Over the past 25 years, Sarah’s paintings have been exhibited in Toronto, London, New York, Bogota and Chicago. They are part of private and corporate collections in Canada, Chile, Colombia, France, Sweden, Switzerland, UK and USA.

Sarah studied at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and graduated with honours from the Ontario College of Art and Design. In ’98, she was one of two selected amongst 2000 candidates to the Post Graduate Diploma in Fine Art at the prestigious Slade School of Fine Art, University College London, UK.

I’m Maxine McCrann and I’m an American multi-media artist based in Toronto. I believe in slowing down, taking a breath, and staying for dessert. My practice is deeply inspired by community, food, wine, and the pursuit of pleasure. Through my paintings and drawings, I strive to capture the little in-between moments that make life so beautiful.

I paint with acrylic and oil stick, draw with anything I can get my hands on, and create three dimensional objects out of wood, paper, papier-mache, and other materials. I am inspired by nature, dining, friends, and by my upbringing in 90’s New York, where bold colors and dynamic compositions were ubiquitous. Through whimsical still lifes and figurative works, my greatest aim is to create art that transports both my audience and me to the moments when we felt most connected and joyful.

Shanan Kurtz is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice includes sculpture, installation, photography and writing. Her work often incorporates natural materials and text to explore temporality, transformation, longing and nostalgia.

She holds an MFA from Parsons School of Design and lives and works near Collingwood, Ontario

Penny Kellum was raised in Newfoundland, on Canada’s east coast. To this day, the raw and natural landscape of her childhood home informs her love of texture and stark contrast. In 1993, Kellum received her BFA from Mount Allison University in New Brunswick where she majored in drawing and print making.

Kellum has always worked in the arts, though the mediums have varied. For the past several years, her love of landscape painting has come to the fore. Her innate design sense combined with meticulous skill and attention to detail allows her to share a unique and nuanced view of the land; the lush and rugged  environs of her current home in southern Ontario. 

Penny lives and works in Fergus, Ontario with her husband and two children.

Melanie Gordon is a maker of quiet revolutions, where imagination meets the senses, the ephemeral meets the eternal, and we meet each other. A multidisciplinary artist, she fell in love with photography over 30 years ago for its ability to see the unseeable. Her work is concerned with how we find connection, belonging, and our authentic selves in systems that want us to conform.

The photographs featured in this exhibition are from Gordon's series, "Gathering Stars", an autobiographical project about motherhood, healing, and wonder that grew out of her recovery from breast cancer. Created over six years, this work is a vivid and intimate inquiry into the fragility and resilience of life. "Gathering Stars" explores themes of mortality, fertility, longing, and love - beginning with Gordon's breast cancer diagnosis as a new mother, continuing through her fertility journey and birth of her second baby, and ending with finding moments of grace in a pandemic with her two daughters.

In 1992 Rob graduated from the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto. A diverse and prolific artist, Rob paints in a variety of mediums and styles. Moving with ease between oil painted landscapes to subjects such as abandoned houses and vehicles done in oil or acrylic paints, or on to a series featuring Inuit “country” food in mixed media.

A founding member of the acclaimed Canadian artist collective Drawnonward, Rob Saley has drawn his inspiration from the far reaches of Canada and abroad for the last two decades. In 2006, Drawnonward & the Kivalliq Inuit Association started the first Inuit Art Camp in that region of Nunavut. Rob has been an instructor at all of the annual KIA Art Camps since it began. In 2013, Rob became a Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society.

Born and raised in the Netherlands, Jeanette has been painting from an early age. She worked as a Delft Blue Pottery Painter after finishing high school, then obtained her BFA in arts and textiles. Two country moves later, she freelances as a graphic designer, and continues to paint and teach. You can often find her sketching or painting plein air, using these notations for larger studio work. Jeanette lives in Paris, Ontario and her work depict the surrounding area, or wherever her travels take her. Her work has found its way into many private and permanent collections.

“When I paint, I aim to create a point of harmony and peace, a breathing space in our busy lives. As a landscape artist, I paint what catches my attention, either a place that takes my breath away, or the opposite - a place to catch my breath, and as to be expected, they often coincide.”

Carrie Chisholm (AOCAD, MFA) built her mixed media art practice on reinterpreting designer product photography in both 2D (drawing/painting/collage) and 3D (sculpture, installation) formats. She is particularly fascinated with the optical effects and illusions generated by the elements of line, colour, and light such as ornamentation, pattern, transparency, shadow-casting and reflection.

Her work is a playful exploration of the tension between desire and fulfillment through transformed depictions of luxurious and opulent products which she knows to be personally unattainable. Each of her works is composed of ornamental objects that have been removed from their original source material, deconstructed and reconfigured to create a new image that is innovative but implausible.

Carrie is a Toronto-based artist/designer and creative professional who draws inspiration and engagement with arts and culture communities and institutions at home and abroad. She has completed international studies at OCAD University in Florence, Italy; Masters degree coursework at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia; and most recently participated in an artist residency at the Chateau D’ Orquevaux in France.

Lisa Hannaford has had a lifelong interest in Art. She has studied and painted across Canada, the US and France. Lisa lives in Thornbury and has a studio at the historic Tremont Studios in Collingwood. “I love being so close to Georgian Bay - it’s beauty has been such an inspiration - whether I am painting there on location or back in my Studio.” Her work has been featured in magazines, on scarves and bags of the exclusive Lemonwood Stores and is in collections around the world.

David grew up in Newfoundland with a great appreciation for the beauty of his surroundings and a fascination with traditional Newfoundland architecture. Although he has always painted it was only upon early retirement from a long career in Social Work that he began painting full time. It is Newfoundland he most likes to paint; however his paintings also reflect his extensive travels and love of older vehicles.

David has lived in Toronto for many years but regularly returns to his home in Brigus for inspiration. He uses a camera to capture his images then uses acrylics to translate them onto canvas in his studio. He is captivated by the process of turning what he sees into finished works of art. He generally uses small canvases because they are more intimate, like the buildings he paints and the town where he grew up. His photo realistic paintings tend to evoke memories of earlier places and times and reflect his love for the land and the architecture found there.

Although mostly self-taught David continues to take courses and workshops including at Toronto School of Art and Scottsdale Artists School. David’s paintings can be found in Galleries in Ontario and Newfoundland, and in private collections in Canada, the USA, and Britain. He has also been a regular in the Toronto Outdoor Art Fair for several years.

After graduating from the Ontario College of Art and Design University in 1992, David Brown embarked on a remarkable 30+ year career in the global art and design industry, earning multiple awards for his outstanding contributions. In 1996, he received recognition from Toronto’s Design Exchange for his impactful work featured in the “Type Culture” exhibition, highlighting his pivotal role in Canadian Typography. David shared his expertise by teaching Industrial Design at OCADU from 1996 to 2006 while managing a successful product design studio. As the founder and managing director of SpeakEasy Events in Toronto since 1996, David has been dedicated to creating valuable networking opportunities for established and emerging artists. In 2013, he established the Five Star Collective, facilitating members’ engagement in international art opportunities such as Aqua Art Miami, Clio Art Fair, and Fountain NYC.

David’s artistic talents extend to abstract encaustic paintings, monotypes, and sculptures showcased in numerous galleries and museums across Canada and the U.S. His solo exhibition at The Painting Center in Chelsea, NYC, is a recent highlight. His works adorn private and corporate collections in North America, Europe, and Asia, while the products he designed have enjoyed successful sales across the continent. David’s impactful contributions have been featured in various books and magazines throughout Canada and the United States.

Peter Adams is an award winning painter born in Glasgow, Scotland. Raised in Toronto, he currently lives and works in Collingwood, Ontario. He has a film degree from Queen’s University, but now directs all of his creative energy towards his visual art practice. Much of his landscape work focuses on realms in which human and natural worlds meet, both in harmony and opposition. Adams has received numerous grants from the Ontario Arts Council and has been invited to participate in residencies in diverse landscapes from the Amazon rainforest of Brazil to the High Arctic of the Svalbard Archipelago. His works have been shortlisted for both the Salt Spring National Art Prize and the Kingston National Portrait Prize.

Matt Macintosh (b. 1976, Guelph, Canada) is an artist and curator based in Kamloops, British Columbia. He has a Masters of Visual Studies from the University of Toronto, where he received the prestigious UofT Fellowship award two years running. Matt has exhibited in Canada, the US and Europe and his works are held in numerous private and public collections. Matt reflects on his deep art historical knowledge to inform his practice. Traditional materials and tools claim their place within centuries of Western oil painting. The basis of that tradition leads relationships of colour, shape and tone to explore painting as a language unique in its capacity to point radically beyond itself.

Deborah Farquharson is a multiexploratory artist working in Mulmur, Ontario.

Deborah collaborates with the natural world to point out the intrinsic mystery of ordinary things, to foster connection, reciprocity and belonging to Nature. Her work urges the viewer to suspend their conceptual understanding of the world around them, and focus on their direct experience of it. She believes “Knowledge gained through direct experience is a form of intelligence that leads to a more intimate way of Being in the world.”

She has exhibited at galleries, group shows and juried art fairs in Ontario, Canada including OMAH, John B Aird Gallery, The Westland Gallery, The AGO (portraits of Resilience 2021), The Lyceum Gallery and The Artist Project. Her work is found in collections in the US and Canada. Deborah’s collaboration with Synchronized Smile in 2019-20, resulted in a multidisciplinary installation entitled, On the Curiousness of a Fieldstone Pile. The installation was awarded the Marquee artist at the Creemore Festival of the Arts in 2019 and exhibited at The Artist Project TO 2020 where it was touted by Blog TO as one of the top 3 booths to see at the fair.

Susanne is a Canadian artist based in Kingston, Ontario, whose paintings are fresh vibrant and peaceful. She has been painting for over 25 years and currently works in three distinct styles: abstract, still life botanicals and contemporary landscape featuring wind turbines. Says Langlois: “I love creating, but now more than ever one of the most important parts of my work is making connections with my audience and my clients through my art. My abstract work is a manifestation of both the physical and emotional processes of painting and I love to witness how that connects with people ” Susanne has exhibited her work in many group and solo shows throughout Ontario. Her work has been purchased by Queen's University, Kingston Economic Development and Spy Cider House, among others and was recently featured as cover art for the Booker Prize longlisted book: “Solar Bones”.

Marina Dempster’s sculptures are both playful and sacred ‘artifacts’ that intertwine form with function. Influenced by the patterns and cycles of nature and consciousness, Dempster cross-pollinates traditional craft techniques to transmute forms, materials, and habits of thought and emotions.

Her sculptural work has been exhibited internationally in over a dozen public art museums and was voted 'curator's choice' at the Cheoungju International Biennale, representing the best of contemporary Canadian craft.

Loop by loop, bead by bead, she asserts our interconnection and the archetypal tensions influencing the polychromatic ways we choose to orient ourselves. Meetings of opposites throw all questions open, bring levity to gravity and are an invitation into radical imagination and previously unimagined insights.

In tandem with her sculptural art practice, Marina is a professional photographer, collaborative curator and intergenerational mentor, most enlivened by what happens when personal practice meets community. She is passionate about igniting arousing creative habits and rituals which foster both self-knowledge, creative development and community connection, leading to positive social change.

Marina Dempster was born in Mexico City, to French and British parents and currently works out of her studio in Toronto, Canada.

Margaret Glew lives & paints in Toronto. Using a personal language of form and gesture, she makes intuitive, layered abstracts that are metaphors for the emotional landscape we all inhabit.

She has been exhibiting her work in Toronto and environs since 1989. She is represented by the Drey Gallery, Toronto. She has exhibited in New York, Atlanta, and Greenville, South Carolina as well as in Kelowna BC and Toronto, ON. Her work is in a number of public and corporate collections, including the City of Toronto Archives, the City of Scarborough Art Collection, and the Richmond Hill Public Library collection.

Wylie was born and raised in Toronto where he studied painting at OCAD University, graduating in 2017. Utilizing the collage techniques of pop art with the energized brush strokes of abstract expressionism, his paintings playfully depict images of art historical references, contemporary life and religious and mythical iconography, hinting at narratives both archetypal and personal. His work expands beyond stretched canvas into unique textile surfaces and objects that confront the formal aspects of traditional painting in an exploration of postmodern ideas of sampling or pastiche of the mass produced object.

James Lamond BSc PgDEng MSc MBA

James Lamond is a Scottish-Italian Artist. He uses his knowledge and experience of the coastal waters around Scotland as the core themes for his painting. He seeks to capture and convey the essence of movement, energy and atmosphere in the constantly changing seas around West and East Coast Scottish waters. The subtle interplay between light and form and the shifting balance between them characterizes the Scottish coastal waters and forms the basis of the Artist's inspiration and desire to convey the essence of their mood and visceral beauty.

A series of repeated gestures yields intricate surfaces in Erin Vincent’s sculptural work - they are actions specific to a chosen material, whether tissue paper, tongue depressors, pins, or other massed-produced materials easily sourced in a global marketplace. The object ubiquity of the individual elements, which one might expect to be emphasized by sheer volume employed, is instead overwhelmed by a surge of ‘likeness’ that transforms as an animate continuum, in some measure organic in feel, the result of a kind of reverse-manufacturing.

Vincent’s artistic practice explores issues pertaining to process, time, accessibility, perception and identity; attempting to create works that are elaborate and intricate, executed with persistence and dedication.Through the reorganization of man made materials she innovates new textures, the base materials index as familiar but their adapted use confuses that familiarity as they are transformed into organic inspired surfaces and forms.

Maureen O’Connor is a life-long animal lover and the photographs from “The Threshold Series” are produced with the cooperation of local sanctuaries, many of these animals from the series are rescues from fur farms and others are non-releasable wildlife.

The animals in these images were brought and photographed onsite in the location seen in these photographs. Several of the locations are private homes in Toronto, Ontario pre-redevelopment or prior to the homes being demolished.

By photographing Canadian animals in abandoned and crumbling domestic architecture, Maureen O’Connor raises questions about how nature and the built environment intersect.

She sees these spaces as transformative, evoking memory and showing the beauty and fragility of the animals and the architecture. While the juxtaposition may appear odd, the images convey a sense of calm and quiet tension.

We are invited to cross the threshold and imagine new narratives where the natural world and the domestic world meet, and consider how this informs our identity in a country defined by both its wild landscape and its orderly cities.

Maureen O’Connor’s artistic practice is lens based traditional photography and her photographs are printed on Chromogenic Paper, traditional darkroom emulsion based paper.

Born and raised in Regina, Saskatchewan, Shawn Evans moved to Calgary to attend the Alberta University of the Arts (formerly Alberta College of Art and Design) . Since graduating in 2009, he has committed himself to a disciplined studio practice. His work is in the permanent collections of various private and public institutes, including Jim and Susan Hill (The Esker Foundation), Air Canada, The Bank of Montreal, and Field Law, Calgary. He currently lives and works in Toronto, Ontario.

Rob is a Toronto based photographer and visual artist. A graduate of the Sheridan College Photography, Rob has always had a fascination with experimenting with alternative analogue processes and vintage large format film cameras. Rob's work has been shown in numerous publications and at TOAF. In his current series “Alchemy” Rob is reanimating long expired SX-70 films from the 1980’s and 90’s that are no longer capable of producing any photographic images. Through a process of chemical and physical manipulation the final results are unpredictable abstract images, reminiscent of the impressionistic, colour field and printmaking movements.

Kara McIntosh is a Canadian multi-disciplinary artist who explores the rhythms and patterns of the natural landscape in an abstracted style. Her creative practice begins with a deep curiosity about place and reflects upon the multi-layered connections between communities and their physical environment. A hallmark of Kara's visual language, her bold mark making with oil paint or hooked wool and silk fibres, offers a refreshing and engaging take on traditional landscape matter. Kara lives near Nottawa, ON and her work is found in private and corporate collections in North America, Europe and Australia.

I have spent the last 20 years as a successful landscape artist. I enjoy painting out of doors whenever possible.

My dad, Birnie Hodgetts, was the founder of Camp Hurontario set among the islands of Georgian Bay. I spent my summers there, fishing, canoeing and painting with my mom, Helen Hodgetts, the camp’s art instructor.

During my summers at Hurontario, I was inspired by some of Canada’s leading artists. A.Y. Jackson, Hilton Hassel and John Rennie were three of the resident artists who came to the camp to paint the Bay. In later years, Ted Bartram, John Hartman and David Blackwood, three Hurontario alumni, all influenced my artistic career.

Georgian Bay, The Niagara Escarpment, Algonquin Park, Killarney Provincial Park and the great rivers that flow across the barren lands in Canada’s far north are the vistas I most enjoy painting.

Matthew Schofield is a Toronto based Canadian born artist who has been exhibiting his artwork in commercial galleries, museums and artist run centres nationally and internationally since 1996. He has exhibited in Paris, Brussels, Florence, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Brooklyn, Chicago, Orlando, Miami and Toronto.

He has exhibited with Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Mulherin and Pollard, Kabat-Wrobel Gallery, MEG Gallery, DU art Gallery, Zia Gallery and Projects Gallery. He has participated in group and curated exhibitions At The Red Head Gallery, Loop Gallery; Propeller Gallery and AWOL Gallery.

Matthew's work has been highlighted in Art Toronto, Toronto Life Magazine, The Globe and Mail, and NOW Magazine. He is featured in the book Carte Blanche Volume 2: Painting, which is an overview of the state of Canadian painting in 2008. Matthew is a founding member of the blunt Collective, a group of artists investigating the role of narrative painting.

Bounthanh Inthavaly is a visual artist based in Toronto. His practice draws inspiration from everyday life of ordinary people in work and recreation depicted in a contemporary manner. His goal is to create artwork simply to showcase the richness and vibrancy personalities and vulnerability of humanity.

Anna's artistic practice blends an alchemy of materials and mediums, employing painting, arranging, and sculpting to convey her chosen thesis. Her photographic works flirt with a painterly realism, leaving viewers inquisitive about whether they are witnessing a painting or a photograph. This dynamic interplay captivates observers, encouraging them to linger and provoke closer inspection.

Utilizing the photographic medium, Anna captures the expressions of her tactile, three-dimensional creations and assemblages to a two dimensional viewing platform. Distilling her art into magnified photographic forms, yielding limited-edition fine art prints.

Henry Ward has been working as a full time portrait artist for over twenty years. He was official portrait artist to Her Majesty The Queen in 2015. An exhibitor at the National Portrait Gallery in the B.P. Portrait Award 2010, his painting of pioneering transplant surgeons was the largest portrait ever exhibited in the 30-year history of the Award.