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.
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.
STATEMENT
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.
THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS
SOLAGRAPH, ARCHIVAL PIGMENT PRINT
20x24in ed 1/3
$1320 framed OR $33/month | $960 print only OR $24.00/month
Sean Patenaude
Sean Patenaude works in a combination of film and digital processes to capture striking, emotional images that invite the viewer to imagine the story beyond the frame.
Since 2013, Sean has be... en deeply involved with the mental health community in Toronto, leading photography workshops at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, World Pride, Workman Arts, and other organizations. His photography has been central to his own wellness and recovery from depression and anxiety, and his greatest joy lies in helping others discover their own talent and creativity through image-making.
Sean has made images for Workman Arts, the Rendezvous with Madness Film Festival, the Suits Me Fine Fashion Show and many other organizations. His work has been displayed at Hart House, Artscape Youngplace, the Gladstone Hotel, and the Contact Photography Festival.
Sean's pictures have been published internationally in books, magazines and online. In 2018, Sean was commissioned to create a Therapeutic Art Installation documenting the construction of two new buildings at CAMH. The resulting six large prints, collectively titled “watching the time pass by the sun” are on permanent display in the McCain Complex Care and Recovery Building.
STATEMENT
The works I’m showing in Being Scene 2022 are solargraphs – multi-month photographic exposures captured through pinhole cameras I made myself. These images were made between 2019 and 2021, taken from various locations on the CAMH site, documenting the construction of two new hospital buildings. The streaks of light in the pictures reflect the passage of the sun across the sky during each day of the exposures. I love this process for how it collapses a year into a single frame.
Because of the super-long exposures involved, the original negatives, recorded on traditional silver-based photo paper, remain light-sensitive and can never be made permanent. They can’t be developed or fixed without being destroyed, for the paper has been pushed beyond its limits. Even the light from the scanner used to record the pictures for printing damages them during the scan.
I made these because I wanted to express how each day marks us in ways we can only see in retrospect. The building of a hospital echoes the experiences of those who will attend it. Healing takes time, and patience, and the changes mark us like sunlight on paper, glimpsed through a tiny hole in the dark.
There are four lights: exposure July 2018 – September 2019, 425 days
There will always be a storm: exposure May 2019 – September 2019, 114 days
200 sunsets: exposure July 2019 – February 2020, 203 days
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.
Robin Jones
Born:
Newmarket, Ontario, CANADA, 1978
Moved:
to TORONTO in 1997
Graduated:
O.C.A.D.U. in 2012 with a B.F.A. in drawing & painting...
STATEMENT
Based on a series of photographs taken more than twenty years ago focusing on vegan foods in a thriving cultural mosaic, this painting is a snapshot in time of a place in Chinatown, Toronto, CANADA, between his school and Home.
The painting belongs to a large series of paintings based on markets where Fruits and vegetables and vegans food are available. The artist reworked the painting in 2021 and painted over the name of the street on the sign in the painting as it belongs to a series of names and public monuments celebrating slavery, misery, and death which do not belong in a city of different nationalities and peoples from all over the planet.
The road the Artist embarked upon to school also led to a giant institution named after another Slave-trader and tyrant. The names of these institutions and roads and monuments need to be changed and taken down immediately as the longer they stay the more pain is felt.
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 Lederle
Amanda (they/them) is a neurodiverse, queer, Chinese-Canadian, recovering perfectionist and empathic human based in Toronto. Their mental health journey has influenced their drive to destigmatize me... ntal illness and support creative expression.
Amanda’s artistic practices include their vibrant paintings of footwear, and black and white ink drawings of Emotional Maps through which they explore self-expression and acceptance, stigmas, and human connection. Amanda’s work has been shown at group exhibitions, in publications, and they have been invited to lead workshops and artist talks. They created there as one of STEPS Initiative's national CreateSpace BIPOC Public Art Residency and is featured as one of five Workman Arts artists taking up themes of mental health awareness and advocacy in art galleries and museums at the Art Gallery of Ontario.
You can also see Amanda at film festivals, podcasts and workshops as an Active Listener, on mental health committees for the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), University of British Columbia, and facilitating Movies for Mental Health for Art With Impact Canada.
STATEMENT
The painting is from Amanda’s Footwear series as a form of exploration of sexual and gender expression. The paintings invite the viewer to question their assumptions on gender performance. Using colour to form the experience, Amanda takes found fashion photography of footwear and adds to the style and colour to create these acrylic paintings.
The paintings showcase people’s legs and footwear in different skin tones and body sizes to highlight how we cannot assume the life of the person in the shoes. Vibrate is the first short heeled painting from the series.
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.