The Changing Landscape – 2021

Albert Wisco

• ‘Summer Solstice’
• Summer Solstice, 11 pm, Jordaan (2012)
• Summer Solstice, 11 pm, Parkdale (2013)
• Summer Solstice, 11 pm, Williamsburg Bridge (2014)
• Video
• Total running time: 3:14

Summer Solstice is a series of three experimental videos meditating on urban bicycle culture. Over three years, I hit the neighbourhood streets of Amsterdam, Toronto, and Brooklyn to capture the movement of bicycles in the twilight of the summer solstice.

One year into the pandemic, the moving images and sounds captured pre-COVID take on new significance.

Alison Kruse

• ‘Wait for Spring’
• 2021
• digital illustration
• price upon request

Lockdown has allowed me to explore themes within my work I would have otherwise overlooked. This fall my work revolved around the theme of passing time and incorporating multiple scenes within one to reflect the synchronicity and repetition that comes with waiting for this period to be over. This second lockdown has felt much more numbing. The task of conceptualizing work felt daunting and laborious.

• Instagram: a.s.kruse
• Website: https://www.alisonskruse.com/

Alison Kruse

• ‘Newport Light’
• 2020
• oil on canvas
• 36 by 48 inches
• $875

My bandwidth for creating new ideas got much smaller and I found myself making work that felt forced. What felt most natural to me was to simplify. I gravitated towards revisiting times within the pandemic where I felt calm. Because all these scenes were lived within this period, it gave me a sense of achievement that contentment can be reached within the turbulence.  This body of work is about regaining balance. Instead of creating work to memorialize how chaotic these times are, I wanted this work to contemplate the space in between.  Moments of peace in between boredom and anxiety.

Anda Marcu

• ‘The City. Sun Underneath’
• Pastel and acrylic on stretched canvas
• 30x30x1.5 inches
• 2020
• $1,500

My work aims to project mental imagery into shapes and bursts of color, exploring my fascination with texture and form. 

 “The City. Sun Underneath” depicts the ‘new reality’ where buildings become our primary space and the sun (the outdoor) becomes peripheral, an afterthought.

Anda Marcu

• ‘Full Moon’
• Acrylic and pastel on wood
• 10x10x1 inches
• 2020
• $450

My work aims to project mental imagery into shapes and bursts of color, exploring my fascination with texture and form. 

“Full Moon” aims to capture finding solace in simple things (the full moon over the city) while longing for gatherings similar to the pre-pandemic time. 

• www.andamarcu.com
• https://www.instagram.com/andamarcuart/

Andrew Lindell

• ‘Coexistence’
• Mixed media: Leftover wood from a cabinet project, Caribou antlers (gift from a visit to Arviat Nunavut), Oils, graphite, pencil crayons, Welders copper wire 
• 8″

My work expresses how animals on earth Coexist with beauty and grace and so must humans Coexist in order to survive in the future.

Mikael Sandblom

• ‘Slowly Churning’
• Digital archival print face mounted to acrylic laminated to dibond in a white float frame
• 39″ x 24″
• 2021
• $1,000

Billowing out; expanding in one place, dissolving into thin vapour in another.
Things appears static at a glance. Over time, all is transitory. Clouds, cities, everything is changing, growing, and passing away. On earth and in the sky.

Mikael Sandblom

• ‘Frames’
• Digital archival print face mounted to acrylic laminated to dibond in a white float frame
• 39″ x 24″
• 2021
• $1,000

Maybe, if I look through many different frames, I could reduce this self-imposed haze.

• instagram.com/mikaelsandblomstudio
• mikaelsandblom.com

Billie Rae Busby

• ‘White Out’
• 18” h x 36” w
• acrylic on canvas
• 2020
• SOLD

I experience a paradoxical attraction for both rural and urban scapes. By using a hard-edge painting technique and colour theory, my abstract landscapes depict wonder and possibility, along with movement, mood, memory and time.

• www.billieraebusby.com

Billie Rae Busby

• ‘On My Way’
• 24” h  x 36” w
• acrylic on canvas
• 2020
• NOT FOR SALE

I experience great anticipation to see and interpret ordinary places in a fresh, new context. 

• www.billieraebusby.com

Chenxi  Bao 

• ‘Dine In’
• City Landscape
• Photograph

People is the important element in urban landscape. During the Pandemic, shops close, landmark change and people evolve.

Chenxi  Bao 

• ‘TTC’
• City Landscape
• Photograph

The city changes by the people who live in it. The public transportation and the restaurant look different after pandemic. 

Cindy Lam 

• ‘Hiding from the City’
• Acrylic on Canvas
• 24 x 24 x 1.5in

Contemporary landscape Featuring a wolf in hiding or perhaps not?

This is the first painting in my newest series “Wildlife vs. the City”. Lockdowns have given wildlife the rare opportunity to experience emptied urban streets. It made me wonder if they have always been close by in hiding and what will happen when things return to normal?

Cindy Lam 

• Changing Winds 
• Acrylic on Canvas
• 30 x 30 x 1.5 in
• Contemporary Seascape

As the weather warmed up and we came out of extreme lockdown the winds were changing. Hopefully normal days are not too far away.

The Cold Blue Series was painted during lockdown and an extreme cold weather warning was also issued. Inspired by delayed cross Canada trips the series aims to speak about togetherness, isolation and also hope.

Courtney Fairweather

• ‘Take Out the Risk’
• 2021
• Digital Print
• 20″ x 16″

As people began to realize that COVID was here to stay, they started ordering online. Suddenly, delivery vans proliferated – climbing the sidewalk, endangering passersby, blocking the cars, and scaring the dogs. They jammed our quiet street with gridlock and the noise of their rumbling.

Eliza Moore

• ‘Portlands Industry Breathes its Last Gasp’
• framed digital print
• 11” by 14”

I’m horrified by too much density and not enough sensitive design in the changing urban landscape. But how to get the message across: What will make people listen?

Eliza Moore

• ‘Clouds Reflect on Life in Glass Towers’
• framed digital print
• 11” by 14”

What will change things for the better? Giving my constructed overlays a voice through their titles may help with this process.

Elizabeth Greisman 

• ‘Sea Immigration Landscape’
• 9”x18”x 3 pieces, oil on canvas
• 2010
• painted in front of the North Sea
• $2,000 for the three

Elizabeth Greisman 

• ‘Immigration Landscape’
• 12”x18”x 3 pieces, oil on canvas
• 2019
• $2,500 for the three

This is a series of Art works based on a study of visual and aesthetic elements of iron work and the experience of immigration of the early colonized settlement of Toronto, Ontario and Buffalo New York, at the time of the early settlement of these two cities. The paintings are a composite of elements of decorative wrought iron and cast iron historic to the environ of Buffalo and Toronto, composed from a study of visuals on industry and architecture at the time of early immigration to Buffalo and Toronto.

Eva Lewarne 

• ‘Anti Social Club’
• acrylic on canvas
• 40 x 30 in
• $1,550

• Paintings: http://www.evalewarne.com
• Photography: http://www.evalew.com

Connection Earth Collaborative (Farzaneh Moallef)

• ‘Water, Ice, Memory’
• 2021
• 31.4” X 44″
• Silvertone digital photo print

The black and white silvertone digital images are part of a new body of work “Water, Ice, Memory” created as the result of long walks on the shores of Lake Ontario in the Winter of 2021. Contemplating on the ghostly silhouettes of trees, nuances in weather, and cloud formations, ice crystals formed on the rocks, and tree branches; I came to understand that nature reveals but also holds back secrets.

Connection Earth Collaborative (Farzaneh Moallef)

• ‘Water, Ice, Memory’
• 2021
• 44” x 31.4”
• Silvertone digital photo print

The images represent nature in a cosmic choreography, a continuous discourse of cyclic revelations and concealments- an interplay of visible and invisible planes, where visible becomes invisible and vice versa. 

Gerda Wekerle

• ‘Emergence’
• 30 inches h x 30 inches w
• Acrylic
• $1200

Landscape painters gravitate to bucolic clumps of trees. My painting raises questions. Are the emergent construction cranes advancing or are the trees?

Gerda Wekerle

• ‘Spring View from the Train’
• 16 inches h x 20 inches w
• Acrylic
• $750

Through the train window, along the railway track, I see blooming trees backgrounded by  construction cranes. Is it nature resilient? Or the inexorable advance of the downtown core?

Hugh Alcock

• ‘In Memorian: Study of Willow Bark’
• 48”x42”
• pastel on wooden board

This is a study of willow bark. I began it around the time of the first lockdown. But during the months I worked on it a close friend passed away. The piece became for me an In Memoriam to her. Perhaps it is by association alone, but the work seemed to gain a solemnity as a result.

Janne Reuss

• ‘Mystical Landscape‘
• Overpainted Photograph
• 72 x 90 cm
• 2020
• From the Series Rewriting the Story

I overpaint my previously constructed photo collages with white paintbrushes in order to cover, hide and rewrite the story underneath. White to me is the color of hope, truth and transformation. I create ambiguous spaces that evoke imaginary inner landscapes… in this process, I am confronted with memories and longings at the same time.

• Contact: info@artjanne.com
• Website: www.artjanne.com
• IG: jannereuss

Jo Anne Maikawa

• ‘MASKS, GLOVES, FEAR – STIFLING THE LANDSCAPE OF OUR LIVES’
• March 2021

Toronto, a city of vibrant communities, under the shadow of COVID, has become a landscape of masks and, for the most part, cautious ways of moving and talking.

This piece seeks to convey the tension between life and community and the stifling constraints of a pandemic.

John Ferri

• ‘Compass’
• 30″x60″
• 2017
• Digital composition on archival paper

‘Compass’ is from my photo-based series Walking On Glass (2017) which focuses on reclaiming a human dimension from the built environment. We live in cities defined, at least visually, by glass. It plays with the light which can be mesmerizing. It’s both fragile and hard at the same time. It reflects and shapes our daily lives. I wanted to explore these attributes

Leena Raudvee

• ‘Viral Layers 1’
• conté on paper
• 17” x 22”
• 2021

After a year of Covid-19, every landscape has been infected with a viral layer, embedded in what we see and hear through memory, fear and loss.

Leena Raudvee

• ‘Viral Layers 2’
• conté on paper
• 17” x 22”
• 2021

My drawings speak to what lies beneath and below, the pandemic deep inside our bodies. Lines describe the flow of earth and sky, hiding and containing the looming threats within.

Linda Briskin

• ‘Fenced In, Toronto (ii)’
• Archival Pigment Print
• 2021
• 15×24 (unframed)

Urban reality is increasingly a landscape of fences-keeping out, keeping in. This series captures this fenced in experience, barriers, barbed wire.

• www.lindabriskinphotography.com

Linda Briskin

• ‘Fenced In, Toronto’
• Archival Pigment Print
• 2021
• 15×24 (unframed)

Fenced In reveals the worlds within worlds present and imminent in the everyday, and highlights the ambiguities in what we choose to see. 

• www.lindabriskinphotography.com

Maria DeZorzi

• ‘Vibrant City’
• 30 by 40 inches
• acrylic on canvas

When we think of our urban landscape we think about the physical factors of the environment. There is a relationship between man and how we view this environment. The lockdown has influenced the view we have of our City into a “Grey Zone”. It is anything but. We have been confined to our indoor spaces, our safe havens that determine how we function. We order online, stream our entertainment and carry on our daily interactions through technology. I painted Toronto as a deconstructed abstract using a vivid palette to illustrate it as the spirited, vibrant place that it was and will be again soon.

• @kanvasstudiooriginals

Maria DeZorzi

• ‘Unity‘
• 36 by 48 inches
• acrylic on canvas

This piece represents the natural landscape that we sometimes take for granted. A marriage between man, animal and vegetation. We have not been able to visit our parks, forests and woodlands. Animals have resurfaced and thrived, sometimes leaving their natural habitats and freely entering our towns and cities. I painted that conception using earthy colors and by the use of intertwined strokes as a representation that we can respectively live together, finding value and regaining sight into our landscape and the beauty and connectivity it holds.

• @kanvasstudiooriginals

Marta Stares

• ‘Pukaskwa Boardwalk‘

The inspiration for my work comes from extended canoe and backcountry camping and trips in Northern Ontario. It is in some of the most remote places that I find a deep sense of connection with land and water. The vibrant, often saturated colours and bold brush strokes communicate the energy of each place.

Marta Stares

• ‘To Be Grounded‘

The inspiration for my work comes from extended canoe and backcountry camping and trips in Northern Ontario. It is in some of the most remote places that I find a deep sense of connection with land and water. The vibrant, often saturated colours and bold brush strokes communicate the energy of each place.

Ned Palmer

• ‘On the Road’
• oil on canvas
• 18″x24″
• 2021

I have been feeling nostalgic lately for road trips (maybe this has something to do with my life, like most people’s, having been more sedentary than usual over the last year), in particular, a road trip I did through the south-west of the U.S. in the late nineties.

Pam Patterson

• ‘Chapel: Grosse-Île’
• 39” H x 98” W
• photo-digital print
• 2020 

Land often exists as a location for refuge. And location can also define one’s culture or personal values. COVID-19 has impelled us into a time of transition. Location has been disrupted and many of us have become nomads detached and deeply troubled. Here at Grosse-Île, a historic Canadian immigrant arrival site, we can see past and present conflated as access to chapel and medical support is erased.

Paula Shephard

• ‘Julian’
•  2021
• Acrylic on canvas
• 10″x28″ 

With Covid-19 I am burdened with the realization that we are never in control.  These works explore the vastness of the landscape and the smallness of us.  

Paula Shephard

• ‘Nicholas‘
• 2018
• Acrylic, cardboard, sand on canvas
• 30″x30″

In a moment, I or the ones I love could be swept away.  It is often an anxious kind of beauty that nature offers. 

Robert Anderson 

• ‘Tell Tale Signs‘

Like so many large North American cities, Toronto is virtually always under construction and in constant flux.

What is changing, what is to come, and more importantly, what has been lost?

Robert Anderson 

• ‘Tell Tale Signs‘

A communal desire drives sign systems and our interpretation of them.  As these very desires, often hidden by the culture of capitalism, systematically begin to break down, objects often seem to reference only their own status as sign systems, and become Tell Tale Signs in this series.

Thea Reid 

• ‘The Mustard’s Were Here 2002′
• Digital Photograph
• 9” x 12”
• 2020

The spaces we travel through daily define our lived experience. Over time we build a relationship with our environment; we being to belong to it, as it begins to belongs to us.

Thea Reid 

• ‘The Mustard’s Were Here 2019′
• Digital Photograph
• 9” x 12”
• 2020

My work seeks to capture these intimate moments between the inhabitant and the inhabited and to explore the relationship between permanence and impermanence that only become tangible when we take the time to slow down and look.

Sharon Erlichman 

• ‘Turmoil’
• 40×30
• $1,200

This past Covid year has presented many challenges and I have turned inward for inspiration and memories. I am painting more images of the prairies in its various expressions and continuing to explore the changing emotions of the landscape.”

Sharon Erlichman 

• ‘Longing’
• 36×24
• $800

I have been painting memories of childhood prairie landscapes and of current memories of the Laurentians where I would normally be for a good part of the year. Longing and turmoil seems to emerge out of the memories and desires for normality when it returns.

Vanessa Shah 

• ‘Portrait of My City Breathing’
• a short film by Vanessa Shah

This is a short film about the relationship between an urban city and its need to breath. During the Corona virus crisis of 2020 Toronto was shut down on March 13. As humanity took a back seat, it allowed the life to seep back into an urban landscape. This is a short film merging the choreography of breath, a hint of urban life, the creative sound design of Ryan Calvert with stolen footage shot by Vanessa Shah during Toronto’s lockdown.

• ‘Portrait of My City Breathing’
• a short film by Vanessa Shah

Portrait of My City Breathing is an experimental short film about Toronto during lockdown. It chronicles the rhythm and pulse of a city coming back to life without people.  The sound track was designed by a talented young designer Ryan Calvert.

• Link to Video