Eldon Garnet is a multidisciplinary artist and writer based in Toronto. Surveys of his sculptures and photographic work have been held at the National Gallery of Canada, the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art and the Amsterdam Center of Photography. He is represented by the Christopher Cutts Gallery in Toronto and Torch Gallery in Amsterdam. Garnet is also a professor at the Ontario College of Art and Design University.

Constructing an unsettling ambiguity by using whatever means of expression Garnet deems suitable is probably the only connecting thread in his works. Instead of defining himself as an artist with a central medium, he tries to create an allegory of words, images, sound and time.

His projects often take on the qualities of a contemporary gesamtkunstwerk (the German term “Gesamtkunstwerk”, roughly translates as a “total work of art” and describes an artwork, design, or creative process where different art forms are combined to create a single cohesive whole) that surpasses both the obvious narrative and the postmodern ironic.

He uses tools like humour, erotic triggers and commonplace semiotic patterns, but never lets them reach their perceived conclusion. The effect is best described as a recognition of the joke but never getting to the punchline, or feeling disgusted or aroused but never quite understanding why.

Alex Flores is the founder and Artistic Director of Las Perlas Del Mar Productions Inc. Flores has extensive mural and multimedia production experience, including ten years of experience as an independent filmmaker, using documentary video production and web design. He has been a visual artist for 18 years.

Artist Statement:
“When I create a painting, my energy becomes happy and positive. Through meditation, I dream I am in forests full of trees, with people and animals in different colours, the shapes become houses where all human beings live in harmony, surrounded by the beauty of the earth.

My paintings are like big urban cities or the jungle in spring, or like people gathering on a cold winter night. I paint my hometown in Mexico City mixing ideas with my home in Toronto.

My mind flies away onto the white canvas with ideas of colourful buildings, faces, trees, pets and harmony around all humans.

I want to show my vision about living in a safe world, where justice and peace and love come together.

The different shapes and structures in my paintings may seem surrealistic; this is an aspect of my technique that I love. I like people to think about what they see in my artwork.”

Working primarily in paint and sculpture, artist Raquel Da Silva focuses on creating abstract environments. Currently her work explores how two and three-dimensional forms and shapes can work together to create an environment. Her art in this collaboration celebrates the vibrant culture of our city. She reflects on that energy to inform, inspire, and regenerate. Da Silva recently completed a one-year residency at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Toronto.

Filipino-Canadian multidisciplinary artist, Jason Zante, has already gained a huge fanbase in the art scene. He’s known for his use of vibrant colours, bold contrasts and ethereal landscapes in his art. If his style looks familiar you may have recently passed by his larger than life mural titled The Riviera located at the Four Seasons Hotel Toronto. His work has also been featured in Architectural Digest.

Illustrator Daria Joyce‘s playful and vibrant style reflects the power of connection at one of North America’s largest shopping destinations located right here in the heart of our city. Her work depicts the inspiring environment bringing people together into the communal experience beyond retail activity.

At the tender age of nine, Toronto-based illustrator Adrian Hayles discovered the expressive nature of the visual arts. With his continued artistic development, illustration became his deepest passion. His desire to learn and absorb from his surroundings led him on a personal creative journey. As a graduate of the Graphic Design program at Humber College with over ten years of working experience behind him, Hayles has established his place in Toronto’s modern art community.

His style is provocative, inspiring and defies categorization. Blurring the lines between graffiti and ultra-realism, his voice and vision is instantly identifiable. His works include countless portraits and illustrations for various magazines and collaborations with the City of Toronto to develop murals for vacant community spaces. In the past, he has painted complete buildings and city blocks, designed award-winning video games and animated television shows.

At the tender age of nine, Toronto-based illustrator Adrian Hayles discovered the expressive nature of the visual arts. With his continued artistic development, illustration became his deepest passion and talent. His desire to learn and absorb from his surroundings led him on a personal creative journey. As a graduate of the Graphic Design program at Humber College with over 10 years of working experience behind him, Adrian has established his place in Toronto’s modern art community.

His style is provocative, inspiring and defies categorization. Blurring the lines between graffiti and ultra realism, Adrian’s voice and vision is instantly identifiable. His works include countless portraits and illustrations for various magazines and collaborations with the City of Toronto to develop murals for vacant community spaces. In the past Adrian has painted complete buildings and city blocks, designed award winning video games and animated television shows.

Pam Lostracco is recognized as an award-winning graphic designer and artist. While studying at OCAD, she completed an exchange in Scotland, won a group competition and earned two scholarships—including her name on a plaque at The Arts and Letters Club.

Pam has worked for several Toronto design studios, including Dinnick & Howells and Viva Dolan. While working with the best art directors, she produced high-end books and identities for clients including Butterfield & Robinson, Curious Papers and Ace Bakery. These projects earned awards from the Advertising & Design Club of Canada, Applied Arts, and Communication Arts. Her illustrations have also been printed in books for Jump Math and Fisher Price, and she continues to design books and logos.

A year-long travel endeavour, started a new artistic path of making mixed-media artwork. Her drawings and photographs were layered into a unique style that has been exhibited at the McMichael, Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition and Toronto Pearson International Airport. She has collaborated with public art projects, including a bench design for Liberty Village, photographs presented in TTC stations for the Contact Photography Festival, and a traffic lightbox for the city’s Outside the Box program. Pam’s artwork and products have been purchased by the Four Seasons Hotel, Craft Ontario and The Textile Museum of Canada.

Now, Pam is designing and painting walls for homes, condos, shops and resorts around Canada. Her murals have been featured on Apartment Therapy and Pinterest. Pam’s goals are working towards helping to improve communities and health care facilities around the world. She continues to draw nature and explore places, while at the same time, create beautiful and uplifting spaces.

PA System’s Alexa Hatanaka and Patrick Thompson work in textile, printmaking, painting, video, and public art. They create collaborative and socially-engaged projects namely in the high arctic, including their ongoing project with Inuit youth in Kinngait (Cape Dorset, Nunavut) called Embassy of Imagination.

Their work has been exhibited in institutions worldwide, such as the Royal Ontario Museum, The Art Gallery of Ontario, Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona, University of New Mexico Art Gallery, Canada House in London and the Guanlan International Printmaking Base in China. In September of 2019 they exhibited their work in the inaugural Toronto Biennial of Art.

PA System has been involved in the Kinngait community for six years spending three months at a time activating their Embassy of Imagination workshops or projects with the youth. They lead out-of-community projects with smaller groups of youth annually. Their work as PA System is currently informed by the significant time spent in Kinngait, as documentation of moments, memories and the land, and reflects on how they may address issues or aspirations identified by the youth, with the youth.

They have partnered with the District Education Authority of Kinngait to launch PPStudio (printmaking program) and Land and Cultural Leadership Program. Equipment funding for the latter program is received from the sales of the collaborative Future Snowmachines in Kinngait ongoing project. The Snowmachines have been exhibited in the AGO and as a large-scale installation at The Bentway.

Alexis Eke is an illustrator and designer based in Toronto. Inspired by Renaissance portraits and traditional Japanese art, she illustrates Black women in a contemporary light. Her mission is to expand the representation of Black women in design and to evangelize, by creating a space for audiences to deeply reflect on themselves and their relationship with God.

With the foundation of a strong female Caribbean upbringing and relationship with God, she aims to use these important aspects to design a unique space for audiences to view her work. Growing up with women with strong personalities, she has always viewed women as resilient and independent. This has later been translated into her artwork, as all of her illustrations are of women, to reflect her cultural and personal experience.

Her clients include Adidas, the Art Gallery of Ontario, CBC, Globe and Mail, Nike Jordan, Palm BaySpritz, Polaris Music Prize––among others.

Charles Pachter, born in Toronto, is a Canadian contemporary artist. A painter, printmaker, sculptor, designer, historian, and lecturer, he studied French literature at the Sorbonne, art history at the University of Toronto, and painting and graphics at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.

His work has been shown at the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Royal Ontario Museum, and the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Kleinburg. His mural, Hockey Knights in Canada, Les Rois de l’Arène, can be seen at Toronto’s College subway station, where the Montreal Canadiens face the Toronto Maple Leafs across the tracks. He holds honorary doctorates from Brock University, the Ontario College of Art & Design and the University of Toronto.

He was named a Member of the Order of Canada in 1999, and promoted to Officer in 2011. Pachter lives and works beside Grange Park in an award-winning residence and studio designed by Canadian architect Stephen Teeple. His work is on permanent display in his adjoining Moose Factory gallery. Pachter’s work has influenced a generation of young Canadian artists, including sculptor Harley Valentine.

John Boyle RCA is a self-taught award-winning Canadian painter, activist, curator and writer known for his use of subjects drawn from his own specific life experience and from Canadian history. He was a part of the London Regional art movement.

Boyle’s intricate and colourful paintings, dealing mainly with socio-political figures and elements of Canadian landscape, place him firmly within the realm of the Canadian response to the 1960s-era Pop phenomenon.

Boyle lived most of his life in the small town of London, Ontario. After studying at the London Teachers’ College and the University of Western Ontario, he moved to St. Catharine’s in 1962, where he worked intermittently as an elementary school teacher then, from 1968 on, as a professional artist. He also lived for a while in Elsinore, a small hamlet near Owen Sound and now resides in Peterborough.

Boyle initially intended to become a writer, but after seeing an exhibition of the work of Vincent Van Gogh in Detroit in 1962, he decided to concentrate on painting. Largely self-taught, he fully committed to his art, and his unique approach quickly began to garner interest. The artist is one of the few since the early twentieth century to focus on the Canadian socio-political figure outside of the realm of portraiture (Lakeside Park, 1970). Boyle is also noted for his emulation of the colour profile of screen-printing by omitting half-tones from his palette. This gives his paintings a dramatic intensity that reinforces the importance of the presented figures.

Boyle, deeply passionate about artist’s rights, spearheaded the foundation of the Niagara Artist’s Company in 1970 and was the founding spokesperson for CARO, the Canadian Artists’ Representation Ontario, the following year. The artist, whose paintings can be found in major collections across the country, was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy in 1975, received Canada Council B Grants in 1971, 1973 and 1979, and a Canada Council A Grant in 1987.