Asma Sultana is a Bangladeshi born British freelance visual Artist, currently living and working in Canada. After obtaining a Bachelor in Drawing and Painting from Bangladesh, she was trained in Lon... don and Toronto in Fine Arts and History of Art. As a freelance artist, Asma has organized solo exhibitions and participated in many group exhibitions in Canada, England, India and Bangladesh. She uses the unique signature of her body to explore the identity in time and place. With the tip of her fingers, using her own hair and footprints, she imprints her emotions onto canvas, papers and fabrics to express the imitable chaos of her inner and outer world.

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.

Suma (Susana Meza) (she/they) is a multidisciplinary artist from Venezuela who creates hand-crafted sculptures, textiles, drawings, and paintings that help the artist cope with the world around and ... inside.

Suma’s work is infused with intentional happiness and responds to their recovery journey and lived experience of addiction, mental health, mourning, migration, multicultural identity, and the ever-constant exploration of the inner light.

Suma works on their art practice and also serves as an arts facilitator, certified peer-support worker, and currently, is a Newcomer Artist Ambassador for MABELLEarts, board of directors of the North York Women Centre, a member of Workman Arts’ Member Advisory Committee, an XOXO Downsview Jury Member, and the founder of ReclaimedArts.ca.

Nathan Cole is a visual artist, photographer, writer, and aspiring naturalist based in Toronto, Canada. Nathan’s practice is based on the exploration of the natural world both physically and visua... lly. By following the pathways set out in nature, he hopes to rebuild connections between our natural spaces and our minds. To unlearn the processes of contemporary society and to overcome his own mental health challenges, he is looking to fully immerse himself in his surroundings by rewilding his mind and senses. Using photography as both a connective tool for himself and his viewers, he then translates these observational details onto his favored medium of scratchboard.

Through his work and experiences with the animals that he depicts, he is hoping to challenge some of the myths, perceptions, and preconceptions surrounding wildlife. Stories and imagery are incredibly important, and our understanding and relationship with nature are so often based around them. With the awareness that for some of these species, their very existence is at stake in our current world, Nathan hopes to challenge harmful practices through representation, education, and his own process of rewilding.

Marisha Pula studied illustration and design at OCAD University. She works with mediums ranging from gouache and acrylic to resin and wood, sculpture and pencil work. She is a member of Workman Arts... Collective, which advocates for and supports artists working with mental health and/or addictions. Her work focuses on environmental and social issues, with a strong emphasis on climate change and its effects on North American wildlife.

Currently she is in an exploratory phase, experimenting with photography.

When she is not completing her own projects she also works as a restoration artist specializing in sculpture repair at Dorset Fine Arts.

Obsessively fascinated by this wondrous existence called life, focused on producing art that deconstructs and explores the age old question of what is consciousness, reality, relationship, and the e... ver elusive ``I``.

My first artistic education as a child was to deeply observe everything. I spent huge amount of time in isolation and silence. I believe that this was the most crucial aspect which later shaped my meditative creative process while experimenting with various mediums and expressions.

Art makes us feel something. It moves us. It changes our outlook. It digs itself far into our subconscious, into the world of archetypes, beliefs, symbols and associations. I enjoy creating work that i can communicate with, when there are no right words to articulate the truths of life. Art at its best can communicate the truths of life, not just as facts, but as feelings, as a deep knowing which we recognize. It is through that feeling that it touches our essence, and I am grateful that I am able to occasionally saturate in its timeless language, and from time to time frolic with others.

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.

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).

Gregg Allan McGivern is a prolific, multidisciplinary artist that experiments with many different forms of substrates, materials and mediums to create art. He has various styles from traditional wat... ercolours; abstract/semi-abstract and impressionistic paintings to fine life renderings. He is an outsider, self-taught artist and considers himself a serial painter as he usually creates art in groups of ten. He has sold art to collectors locally, in Europe, Russia and the Middle East. He is now experimenting with wood burned panels and paint, as well as all forms of textile art and sculptures both hard and soft.

``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.``