PAST - EMERGENCE - Leslie Grove Gallery

ARTIST STATEMENTS

Adesina Segun Caezar

I love emotions. Sadness, happiness, fear, it defines the moment. Nothing feels better than to capture this momentary feeling with each brush stroke. I feel alive in my own universe as the paint listens and understands how we need to work together to let out different kind of emotions on the canvas. These colors do not define me, what you feel when you see my work does.

Alejandra Guasca

I am a Colombian artist living in Toronto. I see art as a language, it keeps us conscious and heals us. Since I was a child art has always had a big impact on me, it is what I am and what characterizes me the most. I am very grateful for my learning and the evolution of my art; right now I can’t say what my style is because I am still discovering it but I enjoy realism very much, right now I am starting to practice abstract art, I really like to learn and maybe later on I will have a completely different style.

Amani Muhammad

I am a Mexican artist in Toronto who has gone through many different studies like: make-up, fashion illustration and a bit of fashion confection. I’ve always been in contact with colors, I just love them all, especially when they are lively and pure. I don’t believe I stick to one concept when I’m expressing myself, I can move from depicting the darkest of my feelings and the brightest ones. For me, art is therapy, it is where I express everything I can’t put into words (I’ve tried and even if people understand what I am verbalizing I feel like the message is still not coming through). Art is my language, It is what lives inside of me. Because of this, I believe I am a bucket of rainbow paint.
I have a few dreams I’d like to bring to reality. I’d love to work as a character designer, create my own comic-books and to be a known artist. I truly can’t see anything other than art in my future. Being able to behold people look at the world through my eyes in a book I made wholeheartedly, would be an honor for me.

Anand Jaglal

Anand is a 2nd generation Indo-Caribbean, Canadian-born artist. Whom work specializes in portraiture using traditional mediums, and they also are involved in digital art realized background and scenes. He enjoys interweaving realism and fantastic elements with different effects applied to paintings to screenshot his imagination and beliefs. An artist who actively expresses and portrays diversity in their work, more often than not, his subjects are racialized BIPOC. Utilizing his own lived experience, social activism is involved in creating his work and showcases what he as the artist is saying and not saying or advocating for. There is meaning behind many of his choices in his portraits. Who is spotlighting, what doesn’t say about them, the tropes they fall into, what the colours around them indicate about the person, the fashion and hair can express about them, how the viewer sees them, and how they might view themselves. By portraying BIPOC in his work as people not with colour-blindness nor stereotypes, he tries to show them as nuanced individuals. Anand is working towards becoming a 2D background artist in the animation industry.

Danielle Abaja

Danielle is a self-taught Filipino-Canadian artist based in Toronto who loves to create cartoons, paintings, and illustrations. She loves to experiment and combine different art mediums to explore fun and unique ways to express herself through art. As a child, she was inspired by video games, fantasy books, and graphic novels. She enjoys incorporating creative and whimsical concepts into her artworks to show her imagination and random ideas she has in her mind. Her artwork focuses on nature, animals and fictional characters in an illustrative and cartoony art style. Danielle is working towards learning how to improve as an artist and create her career path as a freelance artist in the future.

Dave Corlett

Dave Corlett is an emerging painter, woodworker, and carver based in Toronto.

In his studio practice he uses watercolour, acrylic, and locally-sourced wood to create landscapes, cityscapes, and floral and faunal paintings and sculptures inspired by his outdoor environmental experiences in eastern Toronto and south-western Quebec.

Dion Thorne

I am an abstract and street artist based in Toronto, Ontario, I study Fine Arts at centennial college to Gain and enhance my knowledge on visual arts to Further Reach my success. Currently, I’m exploring and studying new and different Art Ideas to further my knowledge within the visual arts, My interest lies with abstract art and painting, the overall goal is to become a Painter/Muralist within the future. My overall goal is to run my own gallery show and have a Gallery, I know very ambitious, but an artist once told me that “if art galleries reject you, prove them wrong,” just by that I now want to run my own show so that someone just like me can say that if that guy can achieve this, then I can too, I truly believe that my adaptability and determination are the key element for Me to reach my overall goal entirely.

Emalina Rubananathan

I’m both a traditional and digital artist. Right now I’m learning how to find my art style and art path. I’m very excited to share my idea and art with the world and learn how to express myself! I’m still thinking about what to do if I finish college. Be an art teacher or study more outside in the art field such as animation. A mask represents how much I can stay without thinking. Ships and myself getting drowned with water. Confusing or just random. How I let allow this persona to take control of me, how people think of me. It causes me to overthink a lot about myself.

Emma Staffen

Art has never been anything I’ve considered to be a part of who I am. It flows so naturally within everything we do it can be so adamantly missed, especially amidst the emotions that cascade into your body while you experience the world. I’ve always wanted to show what I can do but never had the motivation to be able to do it for myself. After times of being told this is what I have to share, I decided to share it, for those who no longer can, and for the one who truly made me understand what Art is. It is whatever you understand, whatever you feel, art is what makes you see what we really have in front of us. I wish I could create all the art in the world, but there’s way too many ideas and if I did all of it, the world would be pretty boring. Art isn’t much if not able to be shared and connect with others. Art is nothing if you cannot share with yourself.

Hadeel Alzoubi

Influenced and inspired by cultures, societies and nature, Hadeel’s paintings are often an attempt to capture thoughts, ideas and experiences that matter. This particular painting is inspired by the vibrant colour of sumac that stands out, and emerges, from between the bare branches and trees.

Issac Lee

Issac is an artist who truly likes to explore and experiment with different ways to express himself. He tries his best to create different artwork that expresses how he feels. His love for art comes from being able to have fun while best expressing himself through pictures and images. He takes inspiration from games and cartoons and the world around him. He likes to take walks to observe for the nature and people around. Issac usually finds interest in drawing people and is usually drawing others or creating his own characters. Issac continues to work to become a better artist, always striving for improvement.

Jennifer Rose

All my work as an artist is created to provoke and connect with others. I seek to create an expression of the complexity of the human experience, the ineffable thoughts and feelings within, and the absolute beauty that overwhelms me. My work offers a reflection, rather than an intended statement, and an opportunity to confront our individual and hidden fragmented selves together. Each creation is an assertion of my desire to convey who I am and to be seen, and I strive for exposure and vulnerability. I long that you might also see yourself in my work; in doing so, I invite an intimate connection. Every piece is an exploration of the deep compulsion for you to perceive the world the way I do and the hope that in doing so, you reveal a part of yourself. I share these fragments of my fear, shame, beauty, compassion, lust, and pain, and long for your connection.

Lauren Beaton

Nerdy, funny, quiet – these are the adjectives that I used to describe myself for most of my life. They lead me to pursue a career in engineering for over 15 years. Motherhood allowed me the time to pause my career in my 30s and reassess my passions and interests. Surprisingly enough I found my passion in art and with the global pandemic throwing a huge wrench into my life, I decided to pursue this newfound joy. My work embodies many of the adjectives listed above – nerdy, funny, but motherhood has added a new lens through which I view the world. This life change was extremely significant and yet shrouded in mystery and so many cultural expectations. I feel that as much as I tried to prepare for motherhood nothing really captured my personal experience. I hope to present some of my experiences though my work so that others who have gone through similar experiences can relate and those who may embark upon motherhood are exposed to a different perspective.

Mani

I am a young budding artist who is very keen to learn new techniques and perform various activities in fine arts. Painting is like a medicine to me. I always paint whenever I am sad, depressed or in stress. I am doing double diploma in centennial college, and I want to do PhD in fine arts. My dream is to open my own art gallery and teach all those children who are unable to pursue fine arts due to the society. I know, I must practice hard and be determined to my work always. Colours are the soul of nature, who have a strong relationship with the creatures living in it.

Marina Fidilio

Art is therapy, the process in making art and the therapy it holds for myself is one of the many reasons why I continue to passionately create. The world is a beautiful place and yet at times it can somehow make someone feel immensely alone. As an aspiring up and coming artist I seek inspiration from the world around me constantly feeding off of nature, events, and people who touch me. It is these interactions that continue to push me in my love for art. In return, though my art making and the pieces I create I wish to touch others who view my art in hopes that someone out there who feels alone will have that one life changing interaction and feel some kind of connected.

Max db

Max db is a cartoonist with autism who paints and makes art in his studio in Toronto. I am a student of Comics History. My art is made for people with the same interests as myself, not necessarily those contemporaneous with myself. The purpose of this artwork is to explore emergence. I feared for my life. The photo that this image is taken from shows the insignificance of my being. Life is precarious regarding if you survive.

Rehana Yesmin

For me, art is a process of exploration. My love for art stems from my awe of the natural beauty I witness in the world around me. Through my interactions with nature, I create art that liberates me and exposes me to a world of possibilities. I use my art to capture the pre-eminence of nature, a source of beauty, peace, and prosperity. After being concealed the phenomenon of emergence refers to the process of being exposed. Just as the butterfly evolves in its cocoon and emerges to spread beauty in the world, my art too has progressed so that I may share these realities. I intend to expose my art to the audience so that they may see the world through my lens

Seyi Taiwo

The Art reflects the problems African Nations are facing, every social amenities being enjoyed in developed nations are absent in Africa. That is why my Art is calling African to behold what they are lacking and do something about it, beginning from lack of Nourished Food, Electricity, Medical, Clothing, Sound Education and Transportation etc. Like the saying “” If you can see it, then you can have it”” It has been sang in songs, written in papers and should be viewed in Art too. The Developed nations too needs to know what Africa lacks and see ways to come to her aid. The entire nations needs to behold the suffering and do something about it.”

Tam Huynh

Ever since Tam was a small kid, she has been dreaming of becoming a storywriter and a illustrator. However, love and passion for Art is complicated, it is sort of hate-love relationship. To describe the chaos in this relationship, “Purple” is a combination of “Red” and “Blue”. Tam loves blue because she finds peace and ease when looking and wearing the color, but she hates red because she never likes how hot and bright of the color is. Therefore, she chose “Purple” is her final color to do the painting, she finds comforts when drawing and anger during her work process. It is a hate-love relationship. “Dreamy Purple” is an illustration of her dream and her feelings when making art.

Tri Le

Art reflects the times and emotions of people in a certain era. Tri Le is an artist based in Toronto, Canada. Despite having a great passion for classical art, Tri is always looking for ways to discover new methods of expression, combining with traditional techniques to infuse emotion into his work, and at the same time, reflecting contemporary issues through art. Although technique is an important factor in a work of art, it is the thought, feeling and message that are the link between the artist and the audience. Therefore, Tri often focuses on ideas, and his way of expression is not bound to a certain method, it can be anything, from drawing, painting to sculpture and arrangement, as long as the work is a transformation from an invisible thought to an aesthetic tangible thing.

Veronica Sanchez

I am an artist by nature, and I love to draw since I was a child. I am a Systems Engineer, and used to work with computers, but since art has always been with me, I found myself making digital designs, I created a comic character and worked for a magazine.

Art is a passion for me, and I realized that whenever I have an opportunity or free time, I use it to paint. As an artist, I hope that the public perceives the message, the ideas and the feelings that I try to express through art. I like express who I am, so I combine the movement, symbols, colors base on feelings, and elements of nature.

I am enjoying what I am doing right now, doing ART.

Current Show

EMERGENCE

Centennials College’s Fine Arts Student Collective – March 16 – 20, 2022

OPENING RECEPTION: Thursday, March 17 at 7 pm