Beyond borders is an exhibition of innovative and stunning Canadian Art. Works span the range of artistic expression, each artist imparting with their unique style a little piece of the Canadian spirit. Playful, humorous, saturated with color, and presented in unique fashion, this is an exhibition to delight the senses.
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Bisa Bennett
 
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Having exhibited great promise as a young artist, Bisa Bennett continued to develop her craft through her teens and adulthood. Her paintings now rooted in her life experiences and stemming from various influences are ripe with mature sensibilities.
The intensity and strength infused in Bennett’s work creates remarkable depth. Her compelling use of contrast and fascination with light make her work stare-worthy and pieces such as Fertility and Forbidden Apple, both saturated in rich, deep colors, gradually envelop the viewer. "My signature color is red. It is the color of love, hope, temptation, and the color of passion," says Bennett. While Bennett communicates effectively through color, viewers will find that even in her pieces that make use of more muted palettes, her subjects reach beyond the canvas to provoke a profound connection.
Bisa Bennett received her formal training in Belgrade and Toronto, where she now resides. Her work has been exhibited in Europe and North America. |
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"Earth"
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"Forbidden Apple"
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Guy Benson
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Majestic angels grace the canvases of Canadian painter, Guy Benson. His sculptural treatment of chiaroscuro allows for his figures to reach out from the shadows, serving to bolster the theatrical presentation as well as reinforce the metaphorical nature of light and shadow as the timeless conflict between good and evil. Benson’s capable brushwork presents convincing studies of the human form combined with his pronounced ability to articulate emotion through subtle expressions and postures. His paintings not only symbolize a spiritual realm but also examine the human condition through a new and unusual lens.
Benson chooses to focus on the positive aspects of humanity: togetherness, family, creativity, and joy. As a student of the arts he studied bookbinding, illustration and graphic design, which intensified his already astounding technical prowess. Benson has exhibited frequently in the United States and Canada. He lives and works in Châteauguay, Quebec. |
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"Compassion"
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"Douleur"
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Cathy Biro
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The feminine form is one of the most primal images in human culture, and splendid with soft strength, the naked woman in all her imperfect glory is the focus of Cathy Biro's works.
A native of Southern Ontario, Cathy possesses both an Honors degree in Arts, and a Bachelor in Education. An art teacher, she teaches in the same school she has been with since 1999. For a time she focused solely on her students, but through the nurturing of young talent her own calling became stronger and more insistent, until she responded and returned to her own work, capturing the female form and imbuing it with the learnings of her lifetime. She now balances her two loves, teaching, and creating female nudes which have a warm depth, an almost wood-like quality skilfully rendered in acrylic on canvas. Each piece carries with it a sensual sexuality, yet there is also a spiritual quality that transcends the lewd, every curve and line cast with maturity.
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"Adonia"
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"Sidonia"
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BLUTO
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More than pretty shapes and colors, art that comes from the soul is art that truly changes the world. Marie Linda Bluteau (known simply as 'BLUTO'), is an artist of soul, and of strength, and of love. Her works speak with gentle harmony that can only be achieved by one who has known chaos, and who has come to tame it within their own being. No stranger to struggle, BLUTO was born in Montreal, Canada, the youngest of five children. Tragic circumstances caused her to be taken from her family, and resulted in many years of emotional turmoil. Fortunately, her saving graces were an indomitable spirit, and a brilliant artistic talent which blossomed from a young age.
BLUTO paints with coffee pigment, a technique she has painstakingly perfected over twenty years. This much admired method creates magnificently timeless images. Recognized for her fluid, powerful brush strokes, her work carries the marks of mastery. Like Celine Dion, she is a woman with a tremendous gift grounded in her belief in the kindness of humanity.
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"Douceur"
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"Reflexion"
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Erin Boake
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Much of the inspiration for Erin Boake’s paintings comes from her travels across Canada. The influence of the landscapes of places like Alberta, Yukon, Quebec, and Nova Scotia along with the fascinating people she has encountered in her travels is evidenced in her artwork. Her bold acrylics and oils on canvas are what she calls her “interpretation of the beauty of my ever changing landscape.” Her straightforward method of capturing the images she finds in both urban and rural settings is a refreshing approach. Often focusing on parts of images – a side of a face, the roots and bottom halves of majestic trees – her paintings give the viewer fascinating glimpses into the larger world surrounding those parts.
Erin Boake is a graduate of the Alberta College of Art and Design where she earned her BFA in painting and currently works as an artist and art instructor in Red Deer. |
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"If I Were a Superhero, I would be Invisible"
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"The Road Home is the Road to La La Land"
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Keith Burnett
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The rich and colorful works of Keith Burnett depict intangible yet comfortingly familiar scenes that transport the viewer into a dreamlike realm. Burnett originally began by painting realist landscapes, inspired by his childhood in England. After relocating with his family to Ottawa at the age of six, Burnett seems to have been affected by the mystery and untamed wilderness of the Canadian outdoors. His current work departs from the realism of his English scenes to convey the splendor and spirituality of nature, carefully rendered with technically precise brushwork in often vibrant color. The sky takes on an otherworldly appearance in these works; whether evoking a swirling haze in twilight or daytime clouds spreading to reveal a bright morning sun, Burnett’s atmospheric representations are simultaneously hopeful and tentative, calming and restless. These emotions become available to us as we are drawn into his beautiful and haunting landscapes.
Keith Burnett’s art has been shown in group and solo exhibitions throughout North America. He currently works and resides in Ottawa, Canada. |
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"Last Maple"
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"Echoes 2"
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Margaret Chwialkowska
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Polish-Canadian artist Margaret Chwialkowska's paintings are drenched with color. Inspired by Canada's boreal landscape, particularly Ontario's rivers and the forests of Quebec, her work captures the drama of nature – surreal, magical, almost fantastic. She paints in the Alla Prima style using a palette knife, creating lusty sculpted scenes infused with light. One can divine the artist's sense of being overwhelmed by the beauty of the landscape she is painting.
Chwialkowska has a talent for nuance and balance; a thousand flecks of yellow climb the trunk of a spruce tree winding its way toward the top of the canvas, the sun casts long wavering fingers across a lake at dusk. It is in these details that we see the artist bewitched by the creative process. Chwialkowska has lived in Canada since 1979 and has shown her work in Ontario and Quebec. She has sold her work in both Canada and the United States.
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"Lookout, Ottawa River"
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"Sunset on Ottawa River, Twins - Diptych"
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Adam Crew
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Situated in the stylistic gap between cutting edge street art and slick fashion photography, the art of Adam Crew is dramatic and instantly accessible. Focusing on iconic individuals with varying degrees of fame and pomposity, Crew renders his subjects with ink on canvas in a high contrast, posterized approach, a technique that allows for a great deal of precision while retaining the delicious imperfections of handmade art. His figures gaze back at the viewers with expressions and posturing that define their deep-seated characters, ranging from inquisitive and brooding to bold and sexy.
Born and raised in the quiet suburbs of Burlington, Ontario, Crew learned early on to cultivate intrigue in his own terms. He graduated from Fanshawe College in London, Ontario before moving to the vibrant city of Toronto, where he further developed his choice working methods and distinctive style. Crew lives and works in Toronto |
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"Hepburn"
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"Moss"
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Gabriel Krekk
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Artist Gabriel Krekk's light-drenched photorealist watercolors belie the notion that contemporary painting must fall within an expressionist tradition. Instead, Krekk's work in photorealism reveals that an unmediated objective image is impossible; his skill lies in embracing that sobering truth while also allowing his humanism to come through.
To paint a "mundane" object in the photorealist style is to see the object anew in ways not even possible through the original medium of photography. Krekk also brilliantly appropriates photography's imperfections--the globes of light which appear on a lens, and the unfocused backgrounds--and transfers them to the canvas, thereby raising philosophical and aesthetic questions about the intervention of technology (and the artist) in the creation of truth and beauty. Look at these works for both the visual pleasure and the humor, for Gabriel Krekk's stunning watercolors please the eye and stimulate the mind, while being benignly and ironically subversive to the status quo
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"The Hatmaker - A Dying Breed"
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"Wait and Sea"
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Joan Mackay
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Joan Mackay’s oils reflect flux, the constancy of change that is the world in which we live. “Seasons change, colors turn, each day brings a new experience,” she says. “Each work is a reflection of what is happening around me.” But one should be careful to avoid provincialism when considering her use of the present progressive (e.g., happening), as the movement Mackay witnesses and depicts is occurring even in a forest of limbless trees, even in just the way hues of light can play upon the retina. Depending on the subject matter, her brushwork varies from thick and bold to perfectly smooth and even. Her use of color is such that it seems to come from a variety of palettes, displaying everything from rugged opacity to sun-bleached delicacy.
Mackay holds a degree in fine art history from the University of Toronto, and she spent six years studying under internationally acclaimed artist Sirak Melkonian. Her work has been featured in shows across Canada and on the East Coast of the U.S. |
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"Sedona Cliff - Triptych"
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"Burnt Trees II - Diptych"
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Dean Munroe
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Stone holds secret forms, forms which Sculptor Dean Thiery Munroe teases from its solid embrace, creating works which express that which otherwise would remain unhidden for eternity. “Your hand follows the thoughts of the stone.” Dean says, and it is this sensitivity that has earned him his place amongst the most distinguished and eminent of modern Sculptors. Dean made his acquaintance with sculpture whilst still young under the tuition of Master Sculptor, Peitro Ellero. He has apprenticed under the famous Frank De La Roche, and has been invited to sculpt with Master Sculptor, Petros Dellatolas in Greece. Dean is a member of the International Sculpture Center and The Art Students League of New York.
This great ball of rock hurtles around the sun, mostly disregarded by those who walk upon it and around it. It takes a special skill and talent to draw beauty from this most ancient of mediums, something Dean Thiery Munroe does with the ease that comes from natural intuition, and perhaps most importantly, love. |
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"The Fierce Beast (North American Bison)"
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"Nascence in Metra"
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Karen Lorena Parker
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Growing up in urban cityscapes, on the coast or in the midwest, there is a romantic landscape, a place we have been, grown up in -- or wish we had. Karen Lorena Parker captures these memories in a gestural brushwork of vivid color, saturated strokes, or subdued melancholic neutrals. Alive with a spark and narrative power, "Autumn Storm" confronts the beautiful challenges of nature in energetic reds and crimsons. "Sage Skies" a dramatically quiet, ominous coastal scene is one of many landscapes painted with a sweeping majesty. Parker states: "Capturing the atmosphere, the mood of light, and the gestural essence of my subject is my challenge in every painting.”
Karen Lorena Parker has exhibited her work widely throughout Canada. She lives and works in British Columbia. |
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"Autumn Stroll"
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"Autumn Kaleidoscope"
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Claude Peyrouse
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A whole new world unfolds when one views the works of Claude Peyrouse. Phantomic entities float in strangely mystical environments, hailing from realms beyond imagination. Visiting this universe of the wild and the unreal is a visual delight, and a sense of stories yet untold teases the viewer playfully in each piece.
Originally from the South of France, Claude Peyrouse now resides in Quebec. Her passion for art blossomed as a child, and since studying the arts and receiving her BFA from the University of Laval Claude Peyrouse has been immersed in art.
Through a combination of abstraction and figure work, Claude has created a unique style and a rich fantasy world that is all her own. Her colors posses a muted brilliance, shining through effortlessly rendered opacity. The figures are translucent shadows of these worlds, gleaming on canvas in a manner that belies the simplicity of the medium, acrylic on canvas. Viewer beware, this work is sure to lay its enchantment upon thee. |
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