Artway Invitational - Past Exhibits

I am a self-taught emerging artist born and raised in North Toronto. My love for the outdoors is exhibited in my oil painting nature landscapes, inspired by my recurring time in Toronto, Ottawa, Huntsville and Brampton. Being a self-taught artist, I don’t ascribe to formal rules, ergo I don’t implement any in my works. My approach is simply that of capturing what I feel when I get in front of my canvas. My belief that we, as individuals, are consistently evolving is reflected in my evolving styles, landscapes and mediums. Much like the landscapes that inspire me, my style conveys power, emotions and beauty with elegance and realism.

My Name is Natasha Lynn Fall. I am turning 36 years old this year and I am from a small town in Ontario called Owen Sound, but was raised mostly in Brampton. Art, in many forms, has been an integral part of my identity from a young age. I grew up a very sensitive, quirky, emotional person, expressing myself through art in the form of drawing, painting, poetry, dance and music, all my life. I also battle serious medical conditions such as, Lupus and Fibromyalgia. Those medical conditions can make daily life difficult, but I find a lot of solace and reprieve in my creative journey. Expressing myself through art helps me cope with the war inside my body.

In my paintings, I enjoy working with acrylic paint the most and incorporating many forms of mixed media into my pieces. I like to experiment! I work with canvas a lot but have also been known to create many works out of recycled materials. I love how you can take a plain old piece of plywood from an old shelf or a piece of furniture and turn it into a beautiful piece of art! I also like to include a piece of poetry on the back of each one, giving the viewer insight into each piece, what it is about and what inspired it.

I have been shown in local galleries, Night and Day and Beaux-Arts, as well as competed in a local Art Battle. I look forward to letting you into my creative mind in my first Artway exhibition!

A fellow artist friend once told me, "Do what makes your soul happy". Art is that for me.

My art practice goes back to my rich cultural heritage and the place from which I belong, a journey to my Indian background.  I come from the city of Varanasi, which is one of the oldest inhabited cities of the world, which modern scholars believe it to be around 3,000 years old.

I am a self-taught visual artist of Canadian- Indian origin, my work are mostly abstract textured paintings. I use mixed medium to work on my art, and try to experiment with different mediums.

My work explores the human emotions, different state of mind, Science, society, life and its expression through Spirituality and its culture.

My art draws strongly on the complexity of heritage and assumed norms that are referenced from memories, history, literature and continuous thirst for finding peace. I consider myself a philosopher, a cultural anthropologist, and spiritualist, cataloguing and processing these experiences.

I also find myself attracted to the astronomy, and the unending thirst of finding the beginnings of myself whether through science or spiritualism. My work often depicts the merger of science and mysticism.

My heritage and the history has been at the center of my consciousness. Through abstraction and pattern, The Feeling within and the Lotus Mandala examines the concepts and experience of unity consciousness both metaphysically and symbolically. The Lotus Mandala portraits, our rise from the material world through meditation and merges itself into the Spiritual universe.  The lotus represents us. The different colors of blue, brown, red and yellow with golden used with the work to evoke multiple layers and meanings.

Through art, I want to express myself, which cannot be described in words.

Please read more about me in the “About Me” section of my website, and get to know about work in the "Gallery" section.

https://theopenmindfineart.com/   

Art can be with us our entire lives, as evidenced with Tom Hinton's early days of art and this particular exhibition with various printmaking and medium experimentation.

Primarly a sketch artist and print-maker in his formative youth, crossing later into oil painting and his natural surroundings.

Tom was born in 1954 and in his youth attended Toronto O.C.A. (now OCAD) where he took part in a special program of designing, building, maintaining and living in a special pod dome for a complete two years.

It was during this time that Alpha School, a Toronto alternative school, started in 1972 and still around today, worked with O.C.A. to teach their young students math through dome building.

Tom's own son Keiran, who was so influenced with his father's two year art project, produced his own version of a pod dome as part of his installation at Pratt University. Keiran Hinton went on to become a successful professional artist.

My name is Krishna Krishnadas, I am a self-taught artist and my work mainly comprises of oil and acrylic paintings. Currently I reside in Brampton, Ontario. I'm a dentist by profession.

Ever since I was child, I was always intrigued by the beauty of art. I started dabbling at the early age of five. My biggest inspiration has and always will be my mother. Her eloquence and beauty were always displayed in her paintings. She's also a self-taught artist. Like most artists I started with sketches and slowly moved onto oil paintings. I was very blessed to be in a school, where my artistic side could be displayed. I competed in a lot of inter school competitions and started raking in prizes. My biggest source of encouragement has been my family.

I slowly started getting fascinated by South Indian mural paintings. Every picture had a distinct story behind them. Every picture spoke to me. This fascination of mine kept growing and it helped me explore, my own personality and traits. I couldn't resist myself to do more and more DIY paintings on pretty much everything that, I could find. It ranged from vases, bedsheets and even my mom’s sarees. The latter got me in a lot of trouble. But it still kept me going. The idea to use these, simple things and turn them into something alluring and aesthetic always inspired me. Mural painting was one of the main reasons for me to, opt dentistry. Both these fields had two things in common those were precision and perfection. Being a dentist also helped me to accomplish another goal of mine, which was to bring a beautiful smile on everyone's face.

Art is a platform, where I pour my imagination and creativity and bring inanimate objects and drawings to life. A few strokes of my paint brush and I could see a whole new world being formed right in front, of my eyes. One of my biggest reasons to pursue art is to, inspire individuals to bring out the hidden creative gems that, we hold inside us.

I take this opportunity to thank Visual Arts Brampton, for giving me a platform to share my ideas and inspirations on a canvas. This will be my first public display after my move to Canada. Lastly, I would like to thank my husband who has been, my pillar of strength through these tough times. He has helped me to pursue my passion and has helped me attain confidence.