An Artful Escape

Kezleigh (Amy Merritt) is a new media and digital artist from Muskoka, Ontario. Her practice explores the fragility and complexity of the human psyche, delving into memory’s flaws, subconscious irregularities, and the dreamlike layers of inner communication. Kezleigh’s work has gained significant recognition in the contemporary art scene, having presented her art both nationally and internationally with growing acclaim.

Lesley Luce is a Canadia mixed-media artist whose work explores cultural memory and hidden histories, driven by her own curiosity and designed to spark it in others. Her goal is for viewers to be captivated from afar and rewarded up close—uncovering a layered narrative that invites and celebrates curiosity. She brings her ideas to life through intricate concentric circles, each composed by hand-placing thousands of tiny paper fragments – each one a detail, a clue, a piece of the story.

Sherry Czekus is a Canadian painter who completed her MFA at University of Western Ontario in London, ON and a Bachelor of Art with Fine Art Studio Specialization at University of Waterloo. The public domain, specifically the city, is a site of observation of urban crowd culture and its participants that Czekus explores through painting.

Alyson Borycki is a self-taught artist, creating energetic and playful abstract paintings. Her paintings are inspired by shapes and patterns observed in nature as well as the array of shapes, lines and structures present in urban architectures. The juxtaposition of looser, organic shapes and more structured lines and geometry with the range of emotional experiences that those contrasts might evoke provides a continued sense of excitement.

Susan's practice involves selecting images of everyday places and assigning them a subjective graphic meaning. In this form of expression, gestures and shapes start to invoke a feeling of being transported to these places. By photographing landscapes and working the images through a lens of emotion, Susan brings beauty and form back to their most simple compositional elements: color, shape, structure, perspective, light, shadow, and value. Whether it's the architecturally lined streets of Toronto or a rural community in Newfoundland, Susan's unique aesthetic is the dominant theme in her work.

Julie Hawkins is an abstract painter from Woodstock, Ontario. Her works are created out of intuition through spontaneous movement and expressive brushstrokes. Julie’s painting practice is an integral part of her ability to live a full and mindful life. Julie has exhibited her work in Toronto, Vancouver, Los Angeles, and New York City, and has been working as a professional artist for over twelve years.

Christina Sideris is an internationally recognized artist and founder of Artistry by Design, where fine art photography meets precision LED technology to create immersive, wellness-driven environments. Her work transforms spaces, captivates the senses, and fosters emotional balance through light, color, and biophilic design principles. Sideris’s installations have been featured at the Art Gallery of Ontario, ICFF NYC, NeoCon Chicago, and The Interior Design Show.

Carole Boudreau is a Canadian-based abstract artist living and working in Toronto. Carole's art draws inspiration from her natural surroundings, the ocean, internal emotions, and human connections. Her work continuously explores the abstract and the indescribable, aiming to elicit emotional responses, provoke questions, and maintain an open-ended quality. Her dedication to her art is a testament to the transformative power of creativity, serving as an avenue for resilience and self-connection.

Born on a farm in Africa and surrounded by the majestic beauty of nature, Lee had always gravitated towards the medium of painting to test the tension between the real and the abstract - what we perceive and that which truly exists. Her abstract paintings explore the daily scenes that are present all around us but most often go unnoticed. There is a delicate balance between fluidity and structure, softness and vitality, transparency and solidity, mystery and clarity in her unique artworks.

Julia Veenstra is a renowned Canadian artist and entrepreneur known for her lively composition and vibrant use of colour. Her artistic journey has led her to focus on capturing the vivid landscapes of her native Canada, for which she has gained national recognition. Having lived in various countries through her life, Julia incorporates diverse influences into her impressionistic and representational style. She chooses acrylic as her medium of expression due to its immediacy and the ability to create bright and vivid colours.

Rachel Albano is an abstract painter from Elora, Ontario, whose aim is to create paintings that facilitate a sense of hope and inspiration to her viewers. Her painting is an intuitive process; multiple layers are covered and revealed until they culminate in a cohesive piece that testifies to this process. Her work has a sense of the artist’s presence through gestural marks and sometimes a heavy scraping back of layers. The use of palette knives creates a sense of rawness and roughness-a loss of control that invites an element of chance into the work.

Maxine McCrann was born and raised in Manhattan, New York City, but currently resides in Toronto, Canada, where she finds space and solace to channel her creativity into captivating works of art. Prior to pursuing a career as a full-time artist, she worked as a floral designer and flower farmer in Detroit.

Christine Walker is a painter and an arts educator who currently lives in East Toronto. Her paintings explore the experiences of migratory songbirds in urban environments (specifically Toronto) through Acrylic and watercolour painting, and photography. She is interested in the contrast between different materials, and using perspective in unexpected or exaggerated ways. 

Joanna Aplin’s figurative and abstract paintings are clean and captivating. Aplin takes her visual cues from the complexities in nature and the human form, then welcomes a reductive process – knowing it will lead to a simpler, more essential presentation of the subject matter. With a comprehensive grasp of color theory and an unwillingness to compromise on materials – her acrylic paintings bring about a rich presence for the viewer to behold. She explores the relationship between color and line, the real and the imaginary, in hopes of discovering the beauty in all things.

Elena Henderson was born in 1965, in the city of Tula, located near Moscow, Russia. She came to Canada in 1996, settling in Toronto, Ontario, and in 2009 obtained a degree in Design from the International Academy of Design and Technology in Toronto. Elena’s latest floral abstract series uses a variety of textured acrylic paint and mixed media. The resulting canvases feature a quiet and calming colour palette with organic shapes and an overall sophisticated and elegant feel.

Frances (b. 1976) studied English Literature and Art History at McGill before discovering a passion for design while teaching in Italy. A graduate of Environmental Design at OCADU, she now works in interior design and painting. Her artwork, inspired by the rich colors and textures of her design background, is held in private collections across Canada, the U.S., the U.K., and the Middle East, as well as in the Canadian Mental Health Association’s public collection.

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