“Haven: Coming Home”

Welcome to “Concourse by Elevation Gallery”

Join us For this grand opening exhibition and celebration on

Saturday September 21, 2024 2-10 pm

LIVE MUSIC, EXQUISITE BITES, AND SPARKLING TOASTS

75 Dyrgas Gate, Three Sisters Mountain Village, Canmore

This beautiful exhibition will evolve as we lead up to our grand opening with new work from our amazing Elevation Gallery artists as well as brilliant new artist additions.

Mark Thompson “My primary drive as an artist is to try to make sense of my place in the world. Through the caprices and inconsistencies of memory, I hope to access a collective memory of place. I do not seek to illustrate a particular place in point of fact, but rather develop and ultimately ‘make‘ a version of the world seen through the isolated lens of personal experience. The paintings are works of memory. This acts as a filter through which to retain only that which becomes important. The inevitable mix of my own history and experience fills in the gaps. The final image is therefore a remnant, the world distilled. My recent work is painted on a rigid support; either a birch or mdf panel or an Aluminium composite material, making them very stable and archivally sound. The paintings are made through an indirect process, the image and surface built up through successive layers of glazing and scumbling. These techniques are steeped in the history and tradition of painting, but allow me great emotional and physical freedom. Each layer imbues a tension, a creative destruction, in which chance and a degree of brinkmanship are invited into the process. The resulting paintings carry a technical narrative - a history of paint - that is all their own. They are built from time; their surfaces becoming a record of every flawed decision made right.”

Eileen Murray “Within my research based practice, I play as a form of inquiry with representations of domesticity and landscape within the discourse of painting and contemporary ceramics. My interests include modes of representation that are commonly associated with the baroque period including, theatricality, bravado and material excess. I am a full time, practicing artist living in Vulcan, AB. My paintings and ceramics flirt with the line between fine art and decoration, using both trending and vintage colours, patterns, and objects that evoke the quotidian, the nostalgic, and the ritual aspects of domestic space. The idea of home is a charged concept - for some they are spaces of refuge and productivity, for others they are places of violence and confinement. I am interested in depictions of the home found in advertising, television, and social media. Consumer culture sells an image of home as a place of harmony and family life, where happy memories and boundless imagination are promised through designer goods and curated spaces that evoke feelings of nostalgia and quaintness mixed with luxury and excess. My paintings and ceramics play with the unattainability of this vision by presenting spaces and objects that subtly reveal the impossibility of these ideals, through excess, perspectival shifts and abstraction.”

Rose Braun - Lake Country, BC “There has been an evolution in my work over the years, from my earliest approach in a tightly realistic mode, to my current, looser methods of application and rendering. I am enthusiastic about the expressive potential in gesture. I began working with steel panels as supports in the year 2000, and like the resistance they provide, plus I enjoy the process of etching them with acid. I still sometimes work with oil on canvas, and with drawing on paper, and even in three dimensions, from time to time.

As far as meaning in my work, I like to keep things open-ended and ambiguous, and leave specific interpretations of the images to the individual viewer. I appreciate and have been inspired by artists who are able to convey intense emotion in their work, and also those who have made biting social commentary. Both Goya and the German Dada artists come to mind as examples. I continue to strive to keep my work feeling raw and uncontrived.”

Barry Russell Lorne Barry was born into a working-class family and raised in the government tenement housing projects of Northern England in the mill town of Lancaster. At the age of twelve he immigrated to North America with his family and began an intense four-year apprenticeship program under a Hungarian Master painter and later completed his education with a B.F.A. from the University of Lethbridge. As well as being an artist Barry has been an editor-in-chief of an arts magazine, educator and more recently a curator of a contemporary art space. Barry lives and works in Calgary, Alberta Canada where he keeps a full time studio and shows his work in Australia, Canada and the U.S. His work can be found in private and public collections around the world.

“My statement often changes with any new series of work but what remains consistent is that I consider myself to be an Emblematic painter and Pop Surrealist using symbols and icons to create a visual language. In my earlier work I referenced characters from my childhood growing up in a class-based society as well as my status as an immigrant. My work now is much more focused on the process of reductionism both in imagery and application so that my paintings imply a story but never fully resolve the narrative. I believe this form of ‘story-telling’ is much more inclusive to the viewer and their sense of what the imagery means to them personally.”

Michael Hepher Michael Hepher is an interdisciplinary artist working as an oil painter, printmaker and illustrator. His 20+ year career has been characterized by works created with a unique sense of colour, oblique interpretation of the common, and a relentless pursuit of quality. Known also as the founder of Clawhammer Press, a historic printmaking studio, Michael is a versatile artist with a broad knowledge of the creative process. He has to his credit a wide variety of successful exhibitions, public art projects, and private commissions.

Clawhammer Press, located in beautiful Fernie, BC. Canada, is the working studio of artist & printer Michael Hepher. “Our process is a historic, slow motion, hand-set, hand-carved, short run, fine art process that produces unique printed material and fine quality goods for bespoke sale or custom projects. Our fine-art prints and ephemeral paper goods integrate hand-carved blocks, typography, and a slightly off-beat sense of humour. To see what's going on in the shop, check out us out on instagram and facebook .”

Louis Trautman Louis Trautman was raised in Canmore, AB and received a BFA from Emily Carr University of Art and Design in 2017. While the focus of his degree was conceptual photography, recently his mediums of choice have been based in acrylic paint, resin and collage. As well as a visual artist, Louis is a working musician. Whether it’s with music or his visual works Louis often implements themes of nostalgia with a certain degree of humour.

Kevin Gilbert and Erin Schwab KG+e An exploration in wood. Tucked into the northern boreal forest of Alberta, KG+e was born. A woodworking family of Kevin Gilbert + Erin Schwab that specializes in handcrafted wooden objects that play somewhere between form and function. After losing their home and studio to a fire and faced with the task of replacing everything, they sought to fill their home with mindfully crafted objects of meaning, craftsmanship, and beauty. That narrative has expanded and KG+e has sold work across Canada through retailers such as Simons and Labour of Love in Toronto. 

Their work is represented in notable collections such as the Alberta Foundation for the Arts and were selected for the cover of the 40th Anniversary catalog for the Alberta Craft Council  A.C.E: Alberta Craft Excellence Exhibition. 

John F. Ross "In search of a visual language with which to tell tall tales of wildness and wonder, I have found myself increasingly motivated subjectively by the whimsical and enchanting images that captured my imagination, throughout my life, in the pages of children's books. Equally so, I have a growing ardor for the formal challenge of representing the raw experience of a place with colour, composition and form. These motivations have driven my paintings down a path toward a new story, solemn and inspired, of a renewed relationship with the sublimity of nature.” (John)

John F. Ross (b. 1984, Toronto, Canada) is a Canadian painter creating  contemporary colourist works charged with personal, sociopolitical and environmental narratives. A graduate of Studio Art from York University, John has been exhibiting his work since 2006 in Canada and can be found in private and public collections across Canada and Europe. 

John lives and works in Calgary

Nick Rooney (b. 1989 Canada) Obtained his MA in Painting from the University of the Arts London, at the Camberwell College of Arts in London, England. Much of his early career was spent focusing on the craft of oil painting developing a contemporary art practice deeply rooted in art history. His current studio work and research now look at the relationship between the reductive formalism of geometric minimalism and the complexity of classical realism. He has had the opportunity to exhibit locally and internationally, having been selected to participate in the Saatchi Gallery’s Exhibition London Grads Now. Nick Rooney now resides in Calgary, Alberta (Mohkínsstsisi), where he maintains a studio practice and instructs at the Alberta University of the Arts. His work is widely collected in both private and public collections most notably the BMO Centre and TC Energy.

In the spirit of reconciliation, I would like to acknowledge that we live, work and play on the traditional territories of the Blackfoot Confederacy (Siksika, Kainai, Piikani), the Tsuut’ina, the Îyâxe Nakoda Nations, the Métis Nation (Region 3), and all people whomake their homes in the Treaty 7 region of Southern Alberta.

“My painting practice focuses on the dialectic between realism and abstraction. I am interested in how painting as a visual language can produce such seemingly contradictory results, the convincing illusion of volumetric forms, and the extreme simplification of flat shapes. The resulting tension of combining classical realism with a minimalist geometric shape creates an opportunity to examine how we attach meaning to the objects and wildlife around us. The more one looks, the more disorienting the experience. The subjects in my work are void of background they are denied a stable footing in space, pulling away from their historical setting and context. Further, its relationship to abstract shapes sets up a dialogue that can make us think about how we experience pressure, weight, gravity, and light.”

Torrie Ironstar Born and raised in Regina, Saskatchewan, Torrie is a proud member of Treaty 4 and Carry The Kettle; he was raised in the Nakota clan with strong culture knowledge. Torrie was born profoundly deaf and learned sign language at public school. He discovered his artistic talent in grade 11 when he enrolled in an International Baccalaureate art course and started to focus on Indigenous arts. Torrie is a self-taught artist, with a focus on mixed media; he has created a diverse range of works: from plexiglass art to screen-printing to painting on drums to collages to oil paints.

Torrie came out as Two-Spirit in his late 20's and reclaimed this identity after being forced by his schools not to identify this way. He went travelling across US and met Two-Spirit people and the communities to learn who he is, while taking his arts into next level of indigenous contemporary art style. Currently working with Making Treaty 7 production for an upcoming theatre project as set designer and visual artist, and currently working with a few artists for upcoming collaborations to focus on Truth and Reconciliation commission and MMIW including Two Spirit arts. Torrie continues to live in Regina where he is working in the arts. Torrie is proud to be Nakota, Two-Spirit, deaf and an artist.

Jean Pederson Jean is the author of “Expressive Portraits: Creative Methods for Painting People”. She has been painting for over twenty years, balancing her strong teaching abilities, and writing with her continuing aspiration to convey her ideas in visual form. Jean’s traditional practice includes referential imagery of people, still life, landscape and abstraction. The layering of a variety of media offers Jean an assortment of possibilities within her work; quality of edge, line and texture all play a role within her imagery. Although Pederson is well known for her mastery of watercolours, mixed media has become an important venue for her creative expression. The portraits in her paintings are based on people who she has met or impacted her. These subjects in her paintings often reflect different walks of life as well as diverse cultural and religious backgrounds. We are hard pressed to find a period in time when the human figure wasn’t represented. Finding a way to express the human figure in a language that reflects the twenty-first century is perhaps the greatest challenge in figurative work today. Jean has work placed in the Royal Collection in Winsor England, and has been honored with numerous National and International awards over the years. In 2005 Jean was the first recipient of the Federation of Canadian Artists Early Achievement Award, granted for her many honors, awards, international writing to promote art education, and consistent, exceptional painting.

“It is my desire to employ different materials, scale and processes in my work and are the evidence of an artist always taking risks  searching for that connection , that one "true" moment between myself ,  subject and you the viewer. The openness , immediacy and sensitivity of my hand while simultaneously rendering a likeness creates complex fluid personages that reflect the emotional and psychological complexity common to each of us, flawed, compassionate, vulnerable and that which makes us most human.” 

Amy Dryer attended the Alberta College of Art and Design, the Glasgow School of Art (Scotland), and the Fine Art program at Mount Allison University. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2006, returning to Calgary to start her professional arts practice. In 2014, she was the among The Top 40 Under 40 Recipients chosen by Avenue Magazine, and in 2008, she was on the cover of Avenue Magazine as ‘Calgary’s Best.’ She has been featured as a ‘Profiled Artist’ in both Essential Magazine and Galleries West Magazine. She completed an artist residency at Emma Lake Saskatchewan in 2009, and at the Banff Centre in 2013, Reykjavik, Iceland, in 2017 and Berlin, Germany in 2018. Amy’s paintings are in a number collections throughout Canada and the US, including the Alberta Foundation for the Arts public art collection. Amy is based in Calgary,

“My gestural style – characteristic of German Expressionism – emphasizes the subjective expression of inner experiences. The truest picture of a moment – the figure of a place – occurs in a balanced abstraction of everyday perspectives. To convey this I combine line, form and colour to represent and yet slightly distort my subject matter. This creates a field of view that is both familiar and enigmatic.”

Michael Cameron - Banff, Alberta Michael Cameron studied at Carlton University, Ontario College of Art and Design and The Banff Centre for the Arts. He has been involved in numerous art exhibitions in Calgary, Banff and Toronto. He has been a Banff-based artist since a landscape artist residency at The Banff Centre. "I'm not sure why I prefer the image to the idea, that's just the way it is. When I moved out west I met other painters doing the same sort of thing I was doing.

“I was exposed to a type of context in painting that I liked, so I stayed. Painting gives me the kind of space that I need for my ideas or images to evolve. It tends to slow things down enough to suit my personality. Painting makes me more aware of the place I live and hopefully the world that I live in.” 

Excerpt below from "Michael Cameron", written by Lisa Christensen

“Encountering Cameron's art at first glance you see beautiful works with finely nuanced surfaces and rich layers of paint. Multiple depths of field play figures against shadows and lights and buildings and sheets of droplets that read like a veil through which you see something intriguing happening. Surfaces are built up - then eroded back with turpentine, then built up again with spray paint. But what is going on in them? To understand this, you must understand how Cameron works. He paints, most often, at night. Quieter, less demanding, more contemplative, "Night," he states, "is a far more interesting world."

But the other imagery comes from multiple sources of seemingly unrelated things; ideas he hears on the radio while he works, phrases from books, recalled imagery from the circumstances of his life, moments spent talking with a friend on the street. Often these random things fuse and join on the canvas as a sort of diary, summations of a moment, an event, a thought. But you must further understand the kind of person Cameron is to really get his work. He is senstive, thoughtful and intelligent, quiet and respectful. He prefers solitude, listens before he speaks. He is caring, concerned about the world's tough issues such as hunger and poverty, injustice and inhumanity. His debate over these things takes place on the canvas, where he lays out his thinking and a complex scene full of multiple meanings seamlessly blended together in seductive beauty. This thread of beauty is his distintinctive hand. It runs through all his works, and they are as different as the circumstances that each new day brings.”

Pascale Ouellet Bigoudi is the nom de plume of Pascale Ouellet, visual artist based in Canmore, Alberta.
"Although my native province of Quebec has shaped the person I am, my adoptive Alberta has transformed the artist I have become."

During her formative years in the mid 90s, Pascale completed a diploma at Collège Jean-de-Brébeuf in Fine Arts and Communications, attended the Visual Arts Program at the Université du Québec à Montréal and graduated from an intensive Interior Design program at Inter-Dec College in Montreal. After moving to Alberta in 2002, she has been largely self directed in her artistic pursuits – participating in artist-residencies, collaborating with other artists and teaching when time allows. Since 2004, Pascale has produced 29 solo exhibitions, participated in more than 35 juried group shows across Canada, and been awarded four Public Art Commissions by the Town of Canmore. She has participated in four artistic residencies at The Banff Centre and have been selected as a 2015 artist-in- residence with TRACS program on Fogo Island in Newfoundland. Pascale Ouellet is represented by 3 galleries in Western Canada and 2 in the USA and her work is in corporate and personal collections across Canada, the USA, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Norway, Switzerland, Argentina and the United Kingdom. Her work is also in the permanent collection of the University of Calgary Faculty of Veterinary Medicine and at the University of Regina.

Artist statement on the 'Blame it on the kittens' series.

It all began in 2016, with a collaborative experiment alongside Mike Cameron, an artist for whom I have great respect . We combined elements of his paintings with fragments of my photographs, creating a spontaneous collage that sat untouched for quite some time.When I finally revisited this improvised composition, a narrative emerged—one that was both unsettling and ominous. Dark tones dominated the piece: deep blacks, roaring flames, menacing figures, and a looming road sign, all evoking the tension of an impending disaster. To counterbalance this heavy imagery, I sought to introduce something light and joyful. The image of an innocent kitten surfaced in my mind, embodying sweetness and simplicity. Yet, it wasn’t enough. This kitten had to be more—its laser eyes became the natural source of the surrounding chaos, burning things as it went.

In this series, the kitten symbolizes a broader concept: 'denial.' As we scroll through social media, we’re captivated by adorable kitten videos, distracting ourselves from the harsh realities of the world—climate change, war, the erosion of women’s rights. In this work, I ask the viewer: could these tiny creatures, with their overwhelming cuteness, be the ones to blame for the chaos? Or perhaps, through them, we are avoiding facing our own culpability.

Wanda Lock An artist and curator, Wanda Lock has contributed to the art world through her artworks and dedication to promoting art in her community. Born in Oliver, British Columbia, in 1969, Lock's artistic journey has been marked by exploring themes such as domesticity, nostalgia, and banality. Wanda Lock's artistic journey began to take shape in her early years. In 1987, she enrolled in the Fine Arts Diploma program at Okanagan College, where she honed her technical skills and laid the foundation for her artistic pursuits. After completing two years at Okanagan College, Lock transferred to Emily Carr College of Art & Design. In 1992, she graduated from Emily Carr with a studio major in painting and a solid artistic foundation.

Lock's artistic practice primarily centres around painting but extends to mediums such as drawing, collage, and installation. She weaves together themes of domesticity, nostalgia, and banality, inviting viewers to reflect upon the ordinary aspects of everyday life. Lock explores the emotions and memories tied to domestic spaces through her works, unraveling the complexities of personal histories and human connections.

Her work belongs to various public art collections, including the Kelowna Art Gallery, Penticton Art Gallery, Headbones Art Gallery, and the Vernon Public Art Gallery. In 2022, Lock was commissioned by the Kelowna Art Gallery to create a site-specific installation at the Kelowna International Airport entitled Kate & Molly, as well as Flying Machines and Poems for Strangers, 2013. In 2016, she collaborated with artist Rena Warren on Escape Artists, a site-specific installation at the Kelowna Art Gallery's Rotary Courtyard, as part of the Artist's Garden Project series.

Wanda Lock lives in Lake Country, BC.

Darlene Lobos Stroke upon stroke of oil, glaze upon glaze, adjusting, sanding looking near and far, rubbing , changing, applying wax with oil, drawing, digging, rolling, scratching, smiling, breathing. Hands move thoughts occur, intuition flows guided by a rhythmic  force. Is it the same force that causes a tree to reach for the heavens, the clouds to shift, the river to flow and the mind to clear like water in a still pond. 

In a similar vein life has evolved for Darlene from the time she grew up in rural North Vancouver in the 1950’s to the present where she has continued painting in a Calgary studio. Her formal eduction includes biology at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver and Fine Arts at ACAD in Calgary but her most vital teacher has been nature in all it’s forms. 

Darlene’s painting are held in private and corporate collections in a number of countries. She is currently represented by Elevation Gallery in Canmore, Alberta and Bluerock Gallery in Diamond Valley, Alberta.

Mark Holliday Born in Calgary in 1956, Holliday's family moved to England when he was five years old. Most of his youth was spent in the English Lake District, which is famous for its profound beauty. Although after leaving school he maintained a caree as a welder Holliday often acknowledged his artistic urges by periodically sketching and painting animals and buildings. In 1984, taking advantage of his Canadian citizenship and looking for a challenging experience, he returned to Calgary. Working as an Industrial pipe fitter for the next few years Holliday began to ponder an odd career change. By 1990 he had quit his job and was enrolled in a fine arts course at the Alberta College of Art and Design. Graduating with honors in 1994 Holliday was also one of the founding members of Untitled Art Society. In recent years he has become recognized as an accomplished painter, his work offering an unusual approach to traditional landscape painting.

Wanda Ellerbeck “Nature for me is and always has been a haven for living in a more than complex world” The title for this work comes from the notion of felt residue of the passing season and how the transition time is a time of home and looking forward. My memory of the waters, colours and air of summer are receding but lingering long enough for another summer expression In this work I am playing with the “horizon” by creating several lateral divisions that when viewed can be read as horizon lines. These divisions exist in this abstracted landscape space and shift the view points resulting in an uncertain perspective. This of course happen while painting in a more intuitive way and is the evidence of a way I feel through my memory of this past recent time and find it through the paint. I arrive at a kind of openness leaving the landscape unfixed and the viewing more emotional . The feeling of the summer space permeates all landscapes in that season and it is that feeling that was motivating the paint.

Born and raised in Alberta, Wanda’s artistic practise has spanned a lifetime and has covered the disciplines of painting drawing and sculpture and installation. Before her engagement with visuals arts Wanda was involved with dance and performing arts. She operated a decorative concrete business for fourteen years and was an industry leader in this sector in Western Canada.

As well as a Canadian wide exhibition record, Wanda has taught extensively in post secondary institutions in Halifax, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver. Her awards include the prestigious Canada Council for the Arts “B” grant and numerous project grants from The Alberta Foundation for the Arts. She graduated from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design with her Masters Degree in Fine Arts.

Wanda lives teaches and works in Canmore, Alberta where she is actively engaged with various art community groups  and projects and mentoring emerging artists and students.

David Sharpe I’m influenced by the American, British and Russian Impressionist Painters, with a special affinity for the American Tonalists of the 20th Century. Seeing nature’s colours more subtlety than intensely, I say this about my work:
“There’s no big complicated ‘idea’ behind it. It’s just all about the light. Seeing it, feeling it and trying to capture it as I see it around me. Compositions with a simple strong design that capture a ‘sense of place’ also attract me. If my work strikes the same visual and emotional chord in a viewer that it did in me when I painted it, if it can make that viewer feel real emotion then I’ve succeeded as a painter.”
An Honours graduate in illustration from the Alberta College of Art and Design, I’ve taught drawing and design at the Ontario College of Art and Design University (OCADU), Concordia University, and Capilano College in Vancouver. I’ve Lectured extensively at Queens University, St Lawrence College and Humber College where I sat on the College’s Advisory Board. I’ve also taught workshops in Canada and the US...My Work has won numerous awards at plein air events and exhibitions and is actively collected in Canada and the USA. My Work is Featured in current painting instruction books, and I teach zoom workshops via Winslow Artcenter in Seattle.I’m one of 2 Canadian members of the prestigious American Tonalist Society in New York. I’m active on Facebook and Instagram and invite you to visit me.

www. sharpegallery.com

Jennifer d’Entremont Jennifer’s artistic journey began in the vibrant landscapes of New Brunswick, Canada, where she grew up surrounded by inspiration. In 2005, she ventured west to Fort McMurray, Alberta, where she honed her skills and earned a Visual Art Diploma from Keyano College. Her passion for printmaking then led her to the scenic town of Canmore, Alberta, where she completed a BFA in Printmaking from the Alberta College of Art + Design in 2015. Jennifer’s work is a dynamic presence on the national and international art scene, with her participation in numerous print calls, exhibitions, and exchanges. She shares a creative studio space with two accomplished artists, where collaboration and innovation thrive. In addition to her own practice, Jennifer is dedicated to fostering creativity in others by teaching printmaking at a local community art centre.

For "Between You and Me," the title emerged after completion of the piece, as I reflected on its deeper meaning. It reminded me of the kind of intimate conversation shared with a close friend—a dialogue that is both comforting and meaningful. There’s an ease in these exchanges, where advice flows and ego is set aside. Similarly, the process of creating this work involved an internal conversation, a back-and-forth of problem-solving, balancing the composition of shapes with a slight tension to keep things visually engaging

Chrissy Nickerson is a professional artist with over 20 years in full time practice. She was educated at Lorenzo de Medici Institute in Florence, Italy, and completed a degree in both Fine Art and Environmental Planning at Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD).

Chrissy is passionate about the Canadian landscape and insists on experiencing each and every site that she paints. She is averse to working from photos, so hikes, paddles, skis and cycles into some of the most wild and remote areas in North America to capture her passion by sketching each step of the way. On return to the studio, she references her sketches and color charts made on site to create dramatic large scale works in oil. Her rich colors and distinctive brushstroke have become recognized by curators and collectors world-wide.

Holly Ann Friesen Holly Ann Friesen is a nationally represented visual artist with an art practice built on paintings that capture the essence of the Canadian landscape. Her work involves taking the familiar and creating something new in abstraction. With a bachelor and master degree in plant science, and more recently studies toward a Master of Landscape Architecture and Artist Residencies, she continues to explore and shape the landscape.

 “My goal through my art practice is to create an emotional connection to landscape without physically replicating it. I encourage the viewer to impress their experiences, memories, and associations on the work.”

Hoey + Xōchitl Globe and Mail called Timothy, “Canada’s most unrecognized artist”. His first solo show at 17 led him on a path of various side jobs & hustles to support his art career. In 2013, while exhibiting in a tent, in front of the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, he realized that perhaps this “slapping paint” is his real job. Nearly 40 years later after that first show, Timothy has no plans to retire and still on occasion finds time to swing a hammer and mix cement.

Part of the motivation and inspiration for this collaboration is that nothing is too precious—we’re cooking with stuff we mostly already have lying around in our respective studios and throwing things in the mix without getting in each others way too much. It’s meant to stretch us creatively, try new things (I don’t know, just google something in latin!) and see what happens without attachment. Plus if it sucks we can blame the other person.

Zandra Xōchitl is an accomplished LatinX Canadian artist and was the only Canadian chosen for the 249th Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition in London. Timothy Wilson Hoey was lucky enough to have fallen in love with her & fooled her into thinking that holding his hand was a good idea.

Elena Evanoff “I like approaching painting in an organic way. Sometimes working from an image ,most times I’m creating from a feeling and responding to each move and new mark. I continue to be very interested in the human form and its solitary experience in this lifetime. I’m most satisfied when breath and brush are in sync and the flow becomes meditative.”

Marcia Harris Marcia Harris was born in Gaspé, Quebec. An interest in art began during Harris's formative years when she entered many contests, including a national one in 1992 where she met her Majesty the Queen at Canada's 125 birthday celebration in Ottawa. Harris completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts program at the University of British Columbia Okanagan and graduated with distinction in 2004. Since then, she has shown in numerous galleries across western Canada, and has been involved in various public art shows. Though her subject matter is diverse, Harris is best known for her nostalgic depictions of familiar buildings in urban landscapes. Her choice of subject is largely motivated by colour, light, and shadow. Through a distinct use of these elements and a painterly approach, Harris's expressive vitality provokes an alternative perception of familiar urban spaces. She revels in the unpredictability of colour interactions and embraces the beauty of unresolved moments. Her methodical application of colour balances theory and practice while emphasizing the potent impact of layering light and shadow.

Marcia Harris's work is in the collection of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts and in several corporate collections in Calgary.