Xiao Wen Xu’s artistic practice is influenced by her contemplative love of the natural environment. Her two current interests are an oil painting series, Minimal Skies, and a watercolour painting series, Rainbowland Leaves. Minimal Skies is inspired by skies she’s seen and photographed. The paintings are abstracted forms of skies with everything eliminated except for the colour gradient, evoking simplicity and serenity. Rainbowland Leaves is a collection of works painted from life using a wet-on-wet technique with watercolour and acrylic gouache. Capturing the realistic shapes of leaves using bold and bright imaginary colours, she seeks to convey her happiness and joy experienced from such a vivid palette and the natural forms of her subject with the viewer; to offer an escape into a “new romantic world”.
Xiao Wen Xu
Xiao Wen Xu is a Chinese-born Canadian self-taught artist in Toronto. She graduated from the University of Waterloo with a Master of Architecture in 2018.
After graduation, she worked at an a... rchitecture firm for three years, while painting in her free time and participating in juried exhibitions. In 2021, she started painting full-time. Her artwork has been exhibited at the Ontario Association of Architects Headquarters, John B. Aird Gallery, and the Art Gallery of Hamilton.
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VICISSITUDES
OIL PAINT ON WOOD PANEL
24x18 in
$720.00 | $18/month
Shannon Taylor-Jones
Shannon Taylor-Jones is an emerging interdisciplinary artist working in Toronto and London, Ontario. She obtained a BFA with a major in Drawing and Painting from OCAD University in 2016, and a post-... graduate certificate from Centennial College in Museum and Cultural Management in 2018. She is a current resident artist at Good Sport, an art collective, gallery, and studio space in London, Ontario.
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This work is a study of the creative processes of living and being: looking into the creative processes of plants, fungi, and other organic matter as non-linear practices of growth and decay. The detritus is the answer to one question and the ask of another. Existing as the layered (un)domestication of interwoven life forms, including the pathologized mind, these pieces exist as fragments of larger processes. Through layers and intersections of care, the inevitability of transience remains.
Anja Sagan
Born and raised in Toronto, Ontario, Anja Sagan is a filmmaker, artist, co-author of an international bestselling book, actor and poet with lived experience of mental illness.
Drawing on thei... r studies in Shamanism, archetypal mythology and sacred love, Anja combines them with the powerful, mythic elements of Nature in their work. Anja views their journey through mental illness as a kind-of portal of self-realization and the opening of their gifts. When we ‘break’, there is a humility and depth of understanding that comes from piecing one’s self back together, as well as a tremendous appreciation for life and every experience.
Anja wants the viewer to explore the beauty and meaning in our lives as spiritual beings, the mythological pulse that is the heartbeat of our existence.
Anja invites us to experience the beauty and magnificence of nature, the human form as well as our place in the cosmos. Anja adamantly believes we are so much more than the labels we have had imposed onto us (based on things like gender, race, religion, socioeconomic background etc.) Anja asserts that while those things may describe aspects of us, as infinite universal consciousness living in human form - our potential is not defined by our bodies but instead, by That which animates it.
Anja’s work is created using multiple media including acrylic, pastel, printed mylar, encaustic, gold leaf and occasionally, found objects from nature.
Anja is inspired by artists such as Susan Seddon-Boulet, Joyce Wieland, Michaelangelo Buonarroti, and Gustav Klimt as well as filmmakers like Akira Kurosawa, and Guillermo Del Toro.
Anja holds a diploma from OCADU in graphic design and an Honours BA in Fine Art from the University of Guelph. Since graduating they studied sculpture at Central Technical School and for over a year with prominent Toronto sculptor, Adrienne Alison (d. 2019) and with another Toronto-based painter, Grethe Jensen. When not writing, painting or creating films, Anja can be found traveling, wilderness camping, hiking, cycling or being human furniture for her beloved animal companions.
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This piece is called “The Road To Recovery”. It is an echo of what I experienced while I was living with the most acute symptoms of my multiple diagnoses. Everything around me felt grey and lifeless. Only my son and my mother seemed real, only they held any meaning and depth to me. I felt like who I once knew myself to be was gone and all that was left was a buzzing hornet’s nest of stinging, negative thoughts. I felt very isolated, alone and grossly inadequate as a parent.
It was a catharsis to create this piece. It helped me release some of the guilt I felt at not being all a parent ‘should’ be. My mother and I went for countless walks in shopping malls back then and she helped me give my son’s life some semblance of normalcy.
It has been a long journey from there. Though at the time I wouldn’t have believed it possible, at length, I actually found my life’s passion. With my son’s and mother’s love, my Shamanic training and my involvement with Workman Arts – I have grown tremendously as a parent and a human being over the past fifteen years.
The photos were taken on my old cell phone from that time period.
These artworks are also available to Rent. Please contact Josh Vettivelu to learn more or read the Art Sales & Rental About page for further details.
Angela Walcott
Angela Walcott is a Toronto-based multi-disciplinary artist and arts educator. She has a broad interest in sustainability, African-Canadian settlement/immigration patterns and community building. A ... variety of media helps to strengthen her narrative including found word art, collage, clay, textiles, watercolour and natural dyes.
She has served as a jury member for the Workman Arts Mentor Selection Committee; a visual arts youth mentor for Project Humanity (PH 1:1) in partnership with Covenant House. Angela acts as a facilitator for Eco Art & Design: Reusing, Reducing and Upcycling Principles which is part of a virtual workshop series. In partnership with Workman Arts and North York Arts satellite program, the program aims to find creative solutions for waste management problems with an artistic lens.
Her visual art has been exhibited at YYZ Outlet, Project Gallery, Propeller Gallery, The Legislative Assembly and ‘The Gathering Divergence’ (a virtual exhibit).
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Future House can serve as a representation of the future and also of the past. How we as a society are finding new ways to exist and co-exist in a world that is not what it used to be is at the cornerstone of a continuous conversation. Future House builds on developing pathways to restoration. This tool can help us to bring our shared experiences together as we emerge through this pandemic pandemonium.
The objective to create a visual representation of what the future will hold is ultimately an important task for the viewer. ‘What will the future look like and how will the communities situated within them interact with one another?’ are some good questions to consider as nations strive to navigate both honestly and respectfully, the difficulties associated with our times and how the approaching ‘future’ will ultimately sustain us when we are at our most vulnerable.
These artworks are also available to Rent. Please contact Josh Vettivelu to learn more or read the Art Sales & Rental About page for further details.
Ann Davidson
Ann Davidson is a Toronto-based visual artist who feels a deep connection to nature. Visions of water, rocks and trees inspire her detailed acrylic paintings and photographic interpretations of Lake... Huron, Georgian Bay, Lake Simcoe, the Rideau Lakes, the East Coast of Canada and the USA as well as London and Scotland. A former commercial artist, Ann studied at Sheridan College, The Ontario College of Art, and the Three Schools of Art. She has been represented in Toronto Galleries both Public and Commercial. Selected Toronto Collectors include: The Foundation for the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, The Hospital for Sick Children, The Law Society of Upper Canada and The Canadian Imperial Bank of Canada.
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From an early age I discovered I could explore and communicate the intensity of my moods through the arts – painting, music, photography and film-making and have been doing so for years. Although a city-dweller, summer trips to Ontario lakelands fuel my creative inspirations. Drawn to water’s mystery, movement and reflections I find endless material to draw on. Small watercolour paintings, sketches, and photos done on location serve as reference to work from in my studio near Lake Ontario where I get out for walks in park-lands to be in nature. In the city I find stimulation from galleries, city-scapes and the people at Workman Arts in a supportive community.
These artworks are also available to Rent. Please contact Josh Vettivelu to learn more or read the Art Sales & Rental About page for further details.
AMANDA
ACRYLIC & INK ON CANVAS
30x20in
480.00 | $15/month
Eduardo Hatch
Eduardo Hatch is a self-taught artist. His paintings reflect real as well as imaginary life experiences. He works both figuratively and expressively, preferring pure, spontaneous color combinations,... form, movement and brightness. For Eduardo, painting is a source of joy, healing power and a haven where he creates a beautiful, colorful world.
These artworks are also available to Rent. Please contact Josh Vettivelu to learn more or read the Art Sales & Rental About page for further details.
Susana Rizzi
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Our modern lives are entangled in a complicated world that is in turn joyful, tragic, confusing, dark, wild, and brilliant. When a piece finally moves to the wall it is then shaped and formed with layers of drawing and painting until the pieces fall into a striking composition of gravity and space. The black and white lines on canvas splashes across the canvas. The notion of space begins immediately in the work vis-à-vis a very distinctive working process, meaning while working on pieces that are pinned to the studio wall, walking dripping and spilling on the canvases still located on the floor analyzing the values and depths given to the final work. Masters of Abstract Expressionism such a Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell, Joan Mitchell and Peter Lanyon are my mentors.
These artworks are also available to Rent. Please contact Josh Vettivelu to learn more or read the Art Sales & Rental About page for further details.
Alan Parker
``I attended the Ontario College of Art in the early 1970s; it was a chaotic experience. I found sanctuary in Frederick Hagan’s printmaking shop. This interest in the drawing and painting aspects ... of and the history in fine art printmaking set my path.
When I went to art school, we were told (constantly), that to be an artist one must become a businessman. Non-sense. We are bombarded, 24/7, by commercialism. Afterall, I can do what you can not do; same territory, different pathway.``
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From Jaques Barzun, The Us and Abuse of Art:
“The aggressiveness and hypocrisy we find as we look about are part and parcel of a relatively free social existence. Individuality survives thanks to the balance between them.”
These artworks are also available to Rent. Please contact Josh Vettivelu to learn more or read the Art Sales & Rental About page for further details.
Lorette C Luzajic
Lorette C. Luzajic is a Toronto-based artist, writer, editor, and educator. Her mixed media collage paintings are regularly exhibited at home in Canada, and have also been shown in galleries in Mexi... co, in the Berlin Metro, in a magazine ad for Carrera Y Carrera jewelry in Madrid, in hotels in Tunisia, on a billboard in New Orleans, and beyond. She has been collected in over 25 countries. Lorette is also the founder and editor of The Ekphrastic Review, a journal devoted to literature inspired by visual art.
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Collage and mixed media is my way of processing the image saturated world around me and the overwhelming noise inside of myself. Art helps me come to terms with my own contradictions and those in the world around me, to face the darkness and stay grateful. I turn the chaos into beauty.
These artworks are also available to Rent. Please contact Josh Vettivelu to learn more or read the Art Sales & Rental About page for further details.
Steven Lewis
Steven Lewis was born in Philadelphia PA. He came to Toronto Canada as a child in 1967. His early art education was self directed, through the use of “how to draw” books and copying. Later studi... ed drawing and painting at Ontario College of Art, which included studying in Florence Italy.
Steven was a founding partner of SPINVFX, pioneering digital post production for film in Canada.
Steven currently practices his painting in Toronto. His work is in private collections, and has been exhibited in group juried shows such as Touched By Fire, Being Scene and was a finalist in the Kingston Prize Portrait Exhibition. Steven teaches oil painting with Workman Arts.
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When I paint, I wish to disappear into my subject. Working from intense observation, I am obsessed with attaining what I call “truthiness”. Truthiness arises from the honest, accurate depictions of my subject.
I am not concerned with issues of “style”. Style is inherent in the method. Light, sensed by my eye, distilled in the brain and expressed by my hand, makes it impossible not to leave a personal stamp.
This is a dance between artist the model reveal truths about them both. From it, a body of work has been created, described as realistic, melancholic, haunting and emotionally dimensional. “Communing With Nature” is a look at how attached to our devices we can be that we fail to notice the world around us.
These artworks are also available to Rent. Please contact Josh Vettivelu to learn more or read the Art Sales & Rental About page for further details.