Artists

"My art is a constant search, which encompasses a spiritual dimension. Images travel between the mundane and a magical world, without making the illusion of reality its main objective. Each painting is a cathartical experience which delineates longing and unveils an attempt to remain in touch with my inner world. My work invites viewers to decipher the emotions that brought me to paint it.
My work is divided into series, which feature my environment, my dreams and my inner world."

"I am originally from Hudson and of Scots ancestry. I have been painting and drawing all my life. I got my first set of oils at age 12. My work has gone from highly textured figurative portrait studies to hard edged symbolism, re-absorbing and personalizing classical techniques and redirecting them into stark story telling. For me what connects my work is an ongoing battle between primitive human impulses and an unmovable destiny of myth and spirituality that forces the untamed or unwilling to do its bidding. In my world, the spirit always wins and woe to those who choose folly or greed, conflict and arrogance. Sometimes my directness will make the viewer feel uncomfortable with the sometimes political, sometimes grotesque or sexual images. I am summoning my own fears, dreams and anger to formulate a commentary on contemporary issues. The act of painting is an incantation to cause something to happen.
Living now out in the country, in Vankleek Hill where Scots first settled I feel very much at home and surrounded by the Celtic myths as I did when as a child in Hudson. Kanehsatake (Oka) was just across the river and, as we searched the shores looking for arrowheads and pottery shards, my game warden Father would tell me stories of the Mohawks and the Iroquois nation. Later, living in Jamaica from my friends I would hear West Indian stories, history and legends. I am intrigued with the universality of myth and legend.”

Mary Ann Varley has always been an artist. She can’t really remember not making drawings and paintings. Born in England immediately after the Second World War, her family promptly came to Canada. She was brought up in Nova Scotia and Ottawa. Mary Ann began teaching in 1968 in Quebec City. When she and her husband moved their young family to Ottawa, they taught at Ashbury College. Thirty years later she retired from teaching at Ashbury. She is also a life long learner, with a Master of Arts, B. Ed., B.A. (Fine Arts). She has taught various sessions at the Ottawa School of Art at the Shenkman Arts Centre. She also manages the Old Stick Cooperative Studio. A highlight of her career was being a recipient of The City of Ottawa, City Builders award in May 2018 for her contribution to the arts, nominated by Lynn Alsford, president of Arteast. Her recent solo shows include The Crichton Street Gallery, The Good Eats Café, the Galerie Old Chelsea, and the Shenkman Arts Centre, Trinity Gallery. She has been in group shows at the Rothwell Gallery, Galerie Electric Street Gallery, The Crichton Street Gallery, Sienna Gallery, Da Artisi Gallery, Cumberland, Ottawa Mixed Media Association (OMMA), the Ottawa School of Art, as a Member of The Foyer Gallery, Fredric Remington Museum(USA)and Arteast.
She was the juror for the New York State Art Show at the Fredric Remington Museum (2020)
The use of collage including photographs is a common technique in her work. Drawing, acrylic, oil and mixed media are her usual media.

Virginia Dupuis is a local artist who lives and paints in Blackburn Hamlet. Working in the traditional medium of oil, Virginia Dupuis takes macroscopic views, often exploring them on a larger-than-life scale. Dupuis strives for a strong tactile quality in her work, building up layers of paint. Her work suggests a narrative around such subject matter as the handcrafts of tatting, knitting or crocheting, to the tangled foliage, fruit stems and their growth pattern in nature.
Dupuis is a graduate of the 3 year Fine Arts Diploma at the Ottawa School of Art. She refined her oil painting practice by completing two Advanced Studios in oil painting, as well as two Apprenticeships in oil painting with a concentration in colour theory. Virginia has won numerous juror’s awards and grants from both the AOE Arts Council and the Ontario Arts Council. She was invited by Artspace613 to create an installation for Ontario2017 Culture Days. She is also an elected member of the Society of Canadian Artists.

“I respect perseverance, patience and resilience and am drawn to a subject by its beauty, colour and rhythm. Exploring colouristically the drama in patterns, suggestive of creation, growth and endurance, allows me to see beauty in the ordinary.”

Painter Sylvie Provost lives and works in Huberdeau, a municipality located in the Laurentians. Since her youth, creativity has always been part of her life. Interior decorating and sewing were here first creative practices that eventually led her to painting. Provost trained with several renowned painters. Her goal was to know several mediums to have a greater knowledge of her art. This brought her to discover acrylics as her medium of choice.
Since 2000, Provost has participated in several exhibitions in Canada, New York and Spain. In 2003, she participated in the Regional Museum of Argenteuil Symposium. Her pieces are sold throughout the world and are part of various public and private collections.

“For more than twenty years, my passion for art has been transposed into visual art, especially painting. I also experimented with sculpture, but my true calling is painting. For years now, I’ve worked with several mediums such as pastels, charcoal, casein, oil paints, watercolours and mixed techniques to finally direct my art toward acrylic, which is my favorite medium. Colours fascinate me, I like playing with the possibilities they offer me. Colourist by instinct, it is with great strokes of the spatula, directed here and there, that the pigments are placed on my canvas as an emotion that leads me to feel all the vibrations that surround me. I transpose this energy in my paintings through the bright colours that I use and the whimsical characters and flower bouquets that I create. I use a diversified palette but the texture and the research of the colour and its pairings are very important in my creation process. This action, which in a theatrical movement brings me to total freedom, is a vital need for me.”

Everist Prokofiev was born in Torun, Poland in 1959. He and his family left Poland when he was six years old, settling in Toronto. Prokofiev was immersed in music and the visual arts and throughout his childhood, developing his love for the fine arts at a very young age. Experiencing pressure from his family to follow in the musical footsteps of his great uncle, Sergei Prokofiev, Prokofiev found that he was much more comfortable composing on canvas. He continued to hone his artistic skills through private painting lessons and at the Ontario College of Art. He received much recognition and numerous awards even before he reached 18 years of age.
After a long career in the Automotive and Home Renovation Industries, Prokofiev returned to his creative dreams. His travels from British Columbia to Newfoundland, from the Arctic to the distant shores of the Caribbean re-sparked Prokofiev’s creative instincts. Observing nature magnetized Prokofiev to his canvas, and continues to provide him with a limitless source of inspiration. He always travels with his easel and box of paints in hand. Prokofiev has cultivated his passion by painting under the instruction of several well-established Canadian and International artists. In 2016, Prokofiev was chosen to be part of the Canadian delegation at the 6th Edition of “Artistes du monde, exposition internationale” in Cannes, France. This was a major turning point for the artist, establishing his oeuvre on the world stage.
Prokofiev and his family now reside in Southern Ontario, making his favourite inspirational landscapes—Algonquin Park, Georgian Bay and the rolling Caledon Hills—easily accessible. In the summer months, he and his family reside in the mountains of Charlevoix, Québec, a place that over the past 100 years, has been a favourite destination for many of Canada’s renowned painters. Prokofiev is very involved in the Arts community. He is a member of several Art Societies in Ontario and Com2Art association in France. He teaches classes and holds palette knife painting seminars for all ages and skill levels, believing that awareness through education will ensure the longevity of the fine arts. Prokofiev’s paintings adorn the walls of private homes, and are found in corporate collections across North America, The Caribbean and Europe.

Fraser Radford was born in Brockville, ON in 1987. The Kingston-area artist has worked with galleries and museums in Kingston, Toronto and Brockville, and has apprenticed with Shayne Dark, one of Canada’s prominent sculptors. Radford holds an BAH in Art History, with a minor in Religious Studies, from Queen’s University; a Fine Arts diploma from St. Lawrence College, Brockville; and a post-graduate certificate in Studio Process Advancement from the Haliburton School of the Arts. His work is held in private collections and has been exhibited in numerous group shows across Ontario and the United States. He has also been published in several magazines across Canada and the U.S.

"The title for my current series of works is Pouring Galaxies. It refers to the method of creating the works, by utilizing a process where I thin out acrylic paint with a mixture of water and a surfactant called Acrylic Flow Release, then pour the paints onto the raw canvas. The method of pouring allows the paint to blend naturally, and without interruption from myself. The resulting canvases appear ethereal in nature, reminiscent of the photographs taken by the Hubble Space Telescope of various nebulae and galaxies.
The paintings in this series are mainly influenced by the Colour Field/Post-Painterly Abstraction artists of the 1960's like Helen Frankenthaler, Friedel Dzubas, Larry Poons, Jules Olitski, Paul Jenkins, Leon Berkowitz, Sam Gilliam, etc. Colour is the main subject of these works, taking into consideration how the colours combine, through the process of osmosis, the liquefied paint getting absorbed into the weave of the raw, unstretched canvas, blending and layering over one another."

The youngest in a family of five children, Danielle Cloutier was born April 1st, 1959 in Ottawa. She is the daughter of an agriculturist from the Byward Market. Her parents Lorenzo and Therese provided considerable support in her artistic endeavours. Ottawa’s High School of Commerce, her personal growth in fine arts evolved under the guidance of Mrs. Willamina Pinkus, the drawing and painting teacher, and Ms. Colliers, the figure drawing teacher. With dreams of fulfillment, Cloutier absorbed her surroundings and proceeded to imitate her older brother's detailed artwork. At age thirteen she won her first international competition in Minneapolis, Minnesota. This first accomplishment led to her decision to become an artist. Soon afterwards, she had a successful first art show through the Fédération national des femmes canadiennes-françaises in Ottawa's St. Laurent. This further inspired her to express her style in her art work. Cloutier has exhibited her works over the years in the Ottawa region and has won many first place titles in art shows. She has been featured in the Ottawa Valley Guide for all artists in the Ottawa region. Her works have been displayed in several publications and magazines such as Folkart and Parkhurst Exchange. She lives in the "deep woods" of East Aldfield Québec where she is currently building a stone cottage which includes an artificial handmade lake named "Lily Francine" in her sisters' memory.