Cancer and the Arts

Blueberries with Nan

Jordan Bennett is a Mi’kmaw visual artist from Stephenville Crossing, Ktaqmkuk (New​​foundland). He currently works and lives in Kjipuktuk (Halifax, NS). His work, Blueberries with Nan, uses elements from Mi’kmaq visual culture to speak to the growth and beauty that can result from change and hardship.

Images of blueberries represent Bennett’s fond memories of his grandmother, with time spent learning about their land while picking blueberries. The fields would be burned at the end of blueberry picking season, which taught Bennett about the cycle of life, death and renewal as the burning enabled new growth to flourish. For him, blueberries represent medicine, power and hope, and bringing blueberries to share at feasts was a common familial and community practice. Similarly, Bennett shares this medicine, through this thoughtful artwork, with those affected by cancer.

Bennett honours the importance of places like The Princess Margaret to support, hold up and breathe life and new ways forward in the collective goal of conquering cancer in our lifetime. Pink double curves represent this breath, movement, growth and life. At the base of this breath is a flame, the catalyst for change and renewal. The striped circle motifs represent time through season and the stages of a single day. On the right, stars based on petroglyphs from Mi’kma’ki symbolize the connection to the spirit world and ancestors, while the droplets on the left represent tears to illustrate the water that connects all beings to Mother Earth. It is Bennett’s hope that these colours and symbols will encourage a moment to breathe and be filled with the optimism of new growth.

Artwork is courtesy of Jordan Bennett and RxART Canada, visit https://rxartcanada.ca for more information.

For more information about Jordan Bennett, visit https://www.jordanbennett.ca
Location photography by Michael Cullen Photography.​

Some Songs

In Some Songs, artist Emmanuel Osahor offers a panoramic view of a lush garden in full bloom. Constructed using a series of photographs stitched together, this expansive image provides multiple views of the same space. This backyard oasis, cultivated by a close friend of the artist over the course of 14 years, inspired Osahor who was moved by the transformative capacities of such close care and attention.

Best known for his painterly practice depicting natural spaces, Emmanuel Osahor is captivated by how these expressions of beauty can be connected to wider senses of well-being, survival and justice, and as a precursor to thriving. Through a rigorously playful inquiry into materials and image making processes, his works depict garden spaces as complicated sanctuaries within which manifestations of beauty and care are present. His work has been presented in multiple solo and group exhibitions across Canada and can be found in a number of institutional collections, including the Art Gallery of Ontario, Art Gallery of Guelph and Art Gallery of Alberta.

Presented in partnership with two seven two: www.twoseventwogallery.com
For more information on Emmanuel Osahor, visit www.eosahorart.com
Photo documentation by Darren Rigo.​

Healing Plants from Around the World

This whimsical, hand-painted garden leads to the Magic Castle, The Princess Margaret's childcare centre. The mural features humble, flowering plants that are known in many communities for their healing and medicinal properties and subtle beauty: Jacaranda, Yarrow, Echinacea, Evening Primrose, Lavender, Calendula, Chamomile and Flax.

Designed and painted by Toronto-based artist Pam Lostracco, it is the artist’s hope that patients, staff, caregivers and other visitors will feel the plants’ unique healing properties.

Lostracco's visual aesthetic and approach blends graphic design with a life-long passion for the restorative power of nature. She creates large murals in unique spaces to create an uplifting and inspiring sense of well-being, much like in natural environments.

For more information about Pam Lostracco, visit www.pamlostracco.com
Photo documentation by Darren Rigo.

Drought

Paterson Ewen grew up in Montreal and spent much of his adult life there until he moved to London, Ontario, in 1968. In February 1948, he began studies at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts’ School of Art and Design. His first public exhibition in Montreal was in 1950, and he continued to exhibit regularly throughout his career until his death. Drought is a traditional landscape in terms of the relationship between ground and sky. Inspired by a severe drought in Pierre, South Dakota, which forced animals out of the region due to withered pastures. As much as Drought reveals Ewen’s interest in meteorological and atmospheric phenomena, it also speaks to his fascination with celestial objects and surfaces through his depiction of clouds, which here appear to be solid, consistent ovoid forms, reminiscent of planets or moons.

Collection of the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto. Gift of Michael and Sonja Koerner, 2018. © Mary Alison Handford

Braids

Multidisciplinary artist Wally Dion explores the personal and cultural significance of braiding in this graphic drawing. Though there are varying meanings and teachings on braids across Indigenous communities, for Dion, braiding represents strength, spirituality, care, skill and companionship. For him, the act of braiding hair is a dynamic of love and trust, and wearing braids can serve as a form of resistance and self-actualization. The vibrant colours draw inspiration from the natural environment and the interconnection between soils and plants.

Born in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan in 1976, Wally Dion is a member of Yellow Quill First Nation (Saulteaux) and currently based in Binghamton, New York. He holds a BFA from the University of Saskatchewan and an MFA from Rhode Island School of Design. Dion’s paintings, drawings and sculptures can be found in numerous collections including the Canadian Museum of History, MacKenzie Art Gallery and the Portland Art Museum.

Collection of the Canada Council Art Bank. For more information about Wally Dion, visit www.wallydion.com

West Coast Transformation #2

Born in M’Chigeeng (West Bay) on Manitoulin Island, acclaimed Ojibwa artist Carl Beam worked in a variety of media including painting, printmaking and sculpture. He received his MFA at the University of Alberta (1976), was inducted into the Royal Canadian Academy of the Arts in 2000 and was a recipient of the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts in 2005. Renowned internationally, Beam was the first Indigenous artist whose work was acquired by the National Gallery of Canada for their contemporary art collection. He employed expressive techniques, the inclusion of images from pop culture and collage with photo-silk screening to create his own signature style.

The cultural, historical and personal merge in Beam’s artworks which explore a range of subject matter such as science, world issues, personal memory, the environment, identity and Indigeneity. In West Coast Transformation #2, Beam chronicles the events of a dream, highlighting the significance of dreaming and spirit helpers, rooted in Anishinaabe traditions.

autobiograph of dream #2…
within the finiteness of a new journey
I saw what I took to be a transformation
in which one form became something else
completely
there were some who
couldn’t see this shift, so the
Raven and I and the whaler had
a real good time…

Photo documentation by Darren Rigo.​

Yucca Tree

Yucca Tree, by multidisciplinary artist Doug Beube, is composed of forty-five custom-printed photographs taken one afternoon in 1996 in Palm Springs, California. Each 8 x 10 inch panel was enlarged by the artist from one negative and then reconfigured and collaged using additional images to extend the scene into one expanded landscape. The inconsistent proportions create an almost fictional landscape with little resemblance to the original scene. The sturdy yucca tree is known for its ability to survive in diverse climates and thus is a symbol of strength, resilience, and perseverance. Though this yucca tree was removed from the property a few years later, it is memorialized in Beube’s dynamic photograph.

Hamilton-born Doug Beube graduated with a BA from York University in 1974 and an MFA in Photography from the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, NY in 1983. Beube is currently based in Brooklyn, NY where he works as an artist, curator and instructor.

In loving honour of Molly and Harry Beube.

For more information on Doug Beube, visit https://dougbeube.com
Photo documentation by Darren Rigo.

Flipped, Hermanas, Enredada/Entangled, Eyes On Me

Jasmine Cardenas is a Canadian-Ecuadorian multidisciplinary artist, working in sculptural painting, collage and installation. She takes inspiration from familial oral histories, childhood, dreams and a multitude of traditions through the diasporic lens of her Latin American Canadian identity.

Cardenas presents four abstract paintings that use layers of collage, found and recycled materials, pumice stone and sand to build up the canvas. Her unique combination of texture and rich, vibrant palette creates images that evoke natural shapes (leaves, trees, flowers) and landscapes. These paintings represent a connection to Cardenas' descendants and ancestors whose spirits live on through her acts of making.

For more information on Jasmine Cardenas visit www.jasminecardenas.ca

The Wind Does Not Move in One Direction

Guided by his explorations in the Canadian wilderness, Steve Driscoll translates his encounters into immersive and colour-saturated depictions of landscape. His technique embraces painterly spontaneity and experimentation, yet it is measured by his deep understanding of the industrial materials he employs. Often influenced by social media, advertising and architecture, his use of colour and light reflects these everyday experiences.

Steve Driscoll was born in Oakville, Ontario in 1980 and received his BFA from OCAD University in 2002. Recent museum exhibitions include I closed my eyes but the light was still there at the Tom Thomson Art Gallery (2020) and Size Matters at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection (2017).

He is currently represented by Nicholas Metivier Gallery in Toronto.

Benedicte, Omnia Opera

Kathleen Margaret Graham RCA was born in Hamilton, Ontario in 1913. She graduated from Trinity College at the University of Toronto with a degree in home economics in 1936. She never received a formal education or training in art. She is known for becoming a painter at the age of 50 after her husband died in 1962. During travels with her husband, she visited art galleries and museums, developing her love of art. Encouraged by Jack Bush to paint, Graham had her first solo art exhibition in Toronto in 1967.

Collection of the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto. Purchase, 1973. © Art Gallery of Ontario

Lily Pond

Jamelie Hassan’s dynamic watercolour may call to mind Monet's Water Lilies in its expressive brushwork, palette of violet-blues, pinks and greens, and the lack of a horizon line, which draws attention to the water’s surface. Though seemingly impressionistic in its formal elements, Hassan’s painting carries deep political and environmental undertones. Her interest in landscape is informed by multi-layered histories and urgent issues of our time, such as the human impact on our natural environment. In this painting, the lilies are lively and thriving, acting as symbols of resistance and hope.

Jamelie Hassan, born in London, Ontario, of Arabic background, is a visual artist and was one of the founders of two artist-run centres in London, Ontario: the Forest City Gallery (1973-present) and the Embassy Cultural House (1983-1990/2020 - to present). Her work is represented in numerous public collections in Canada and internationally, including The New Museum, NY (NY, USA), and the Library of Alexandria (Alexandria, Egypt). She received the "Canada 125" Medal for outstanding community service in 1993, the Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts in 2001 and an honorary doctorate from OCAD University, Toronto in 2018.

Collection of the Canada Council Art Bank. For more information about Jamelie Hassan, visit www.jameliehassan.ca

Raven Teaching its Young

A leader of contemporary Indigenous art in Canada, Norval Morrisseau is known for his visual storytelling and signature style of black, bold outlines, bright colours and flat figures in two-dimensional space. He was the founder of the Woodland School of Art, a recipient of the Order of Canada (1978) and a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts and the Indigenous Group of Seven.

Morrisseau's innovative works blend the traditional and contemporary to explore Ojibwa mythology, spirituality and the relationship between humans, animals and the environment. The palette of soothing greens and vibrant yellows in Raven Teaching its Young stems from Morrisseau’s belief in the healing potential of colour in art. He also believed in the importance of teaching and learning within community and passing on cultural knowledge through generations.

Photo documentation by Darren Rigo.

Mother with Children

Family