2015
Oil, acrylic and graffiti fobs on canvas
30 x 30 x 1.5 inches

Value: $1,500
Starting Bid: $750

Artist Statement

I am drawn to the intersection of human and natural worlds, especially in this era of distrust of science and of media of each other.

Artist Biography

Peter Adams is an award-winning painter and visual artist. For three decades he’s been using his art to explore our relationship with nature: how we value it and connect to it, and how our engagement with nature changes it, and changes us. His work encourages conversation around beauty, isolation, entanglement and power.  Born in Glasgow Scotland, raised in Toronto, Adams spent 20 years living in the Creemore community.  He now lives in Collingwood Ontario.  He has received numerous grants from the Ontario Arts Council and has been a finalist in the Salt Spring National Art Prize, the Kingston Prize and the Scottish Portrait Award in Fine Art.

2024
Mixed media
48 x 36 x 2

Value: $1,000
Starting Bid: $500

Artist Statement

My cityscapes reimagine the urban environment through bold composition and a rhythm of color that reflects both movement and stillness. The geometry of buildings becomes a framework for emotion — hard edges balanced by vibrant planes of light. Influenced by a life long love of skateboarding, hip hop, punk rock and the visual rhythm of street culture, I use sharp contrasts, reflective hues, and thick textures to give each surface a pulse. The work sits between structure and spontaneity, control and drift — much like gliding through a city, feeling its rhythm underfoot. What emerges is a language of architecture and atmosphere: familiar streets transformed into something alive, electric, and unique.

Artist Biography

David has been painting for 31 years and resides in Barrie, ON. He has exhibited across the region and within the Toronto area.

2023
Fine art photography, pigment based archival print
Limited edition, print 1/5
24 x 18 inches

Value: $800
Starting Bid: $400

DID YOU KNOW: Angela Aujla had two local exhibitions in 2023: My Grandmother’s Dress  at the MacLaren Art Centre and Lessons Learned at The Campus Gallery, Georgian College.

Artist Statement

Classic Mughal architecture and Bollywood cinema merge with my original photograph of a historic Punjabi fort and my “pop-artified” take of a found vintage photo featuring Bollywood superstar Waheeda Rehman.

Artist Biography

Angela Aujla was born on the west coast of British Columbia and earned her BA and MA in Sociology and Anthropology from Simon Fraser University. In addition to her visual art practice, she is a professor at Georgian College, specializing in Visual Culture.

Her artwork draws on academic and personal engagements with cultural production, visual narrative, and diasporic identity.
Aujla’s multidisciplinary practice spans illustration, fine art photography, collage, and mixed media installation. She explores how material objects and symbols transmit culture, evoking meaning, memory, and nostalgia across generations and geographies. By reanimating excluded histories and reimagining material culture, her work offers a visual critique of colonial discourse and examines the complexities of cultural hybridity.

Recent exhibitions include solo shows at the MacLaren Art Centre and Georgian College Campus Gallery, and a recent group exhibit at Gallery 1065 in Toronto, part of the Contact Photo Festival. She has created both temporary and permanent public art installations in Barrie, Innisfil, Oro-Medonte, Hamilton, Burlington, Toronto, Vancouver, and Surrey.

Aujla’s work has been supported by the Ontario Arts Council, she is the 2025 recipient of the Arts and Culture Leadership Award from the Innisfil Indian Association and was the illustrator of Historica Canada’s animated short about the Komagata Maru incident, shortlisted for a Rockie Award at the Banff World Media Festival. Her art is part of Humber College’s permanent art collection (Toronto) and has been featured in the Times of India (Delhi), Scroll Magazine (Delhi), Gal-Dem (UK), Canadian Woman Studies (Toronto).

2024
Acrylic, cotton thread
9 x 6.5 x 6.5 inches

Value: $300
Starting Bid: $150

DID YOU KNOW: Amy Bagshaw is the Director of The Campus Gallery at Georgian College, and exhibited a site-specific sculpture in the City of Barrie’s public art exhibition, Seeds to Sow, in 2024.

Artist Statement

Spool 3 (Late June Light) is a reflection on my introduction to fibre arts through Spool/Corking. Taught by my grandmother and inspired by this nostalgia through a juxtaposition of materials, this sculpture highlights line, geometric forms, and repetitive hand work.

Note: this can be a wall hung or a table sculpture

Artist Biography

Amy Bagshaw is a visual artist and educator. She earned her BFA from Queen’s University, B.Ed from the University of Toronto, and MFA from Stony Brook University, New York, with a focus on fibre installation and intermedia. A Graduate Gender Studies Scholar, her art practice extends to Intersectional Feminism and contemporary craft practices. She has exhibited throughout North America and has created public art works for the City of Barrie and Alliston, ON. Amy has received numerous grants, participated in residencies, and she regularly publishes and presents on art, equity, and education. She is a Professor and Coordinator in the School of Design and Visual Art at Georgian College and directs The Campus Gallery. She lives in Alliston with her family.

2023
Oil on canvas
32 x 36 x 1.5 inches

Value: $7,000
Starting Bid: $3,500

DID YOU KNOW: Matt Bahen had a solo exhibition, Gravity’s Faith, at the MacLaren Art Centre in 2013.

Artist Statement

This painting was made as part of a body of work, entitled “Once Only Imagined”. The title comes from a William Blake line from the Marriage of Heaven and Hell, “What is now proved was once only imagined.” With this body of work, all the paintings, including this one are composite images, together becoming a new whole. The idea being that to realize a different future must begin with imagining.

Artist Biography

Matt Bahen is an artist living and working in Toronto. Bahen’s primary influence is literature. Using an impasto technique of thick oil paint, he strives to interpret the power of metaphor and allegory with paint. The textured surfaces of the works and stark compositions are at once unsettling and highly engaging. Using various including water, fire and animals, Bahen constructs individual narratives that remain in a state of perpetual tension. Most recently Bahen has been working on series of landscape paintings utilizing the literary device of the enchanted forest as metaphor for our changing climate.

Matt Bahen was born in 1979 in Toronto. He received his BFA from the Ontario College of Art and Design University in 2002. In 2013 his exhibition Gravity’s Faith was held at the MacLaren Art Centre in Barrie, in 2022 his exhibition There is Something Happening in the Valley was held at the Glenhyrst Art Gallery in Brantford Ontario, in 2024 his exhibition Coming Down the Mountain was held at the MacIntosh Gallery at Western University London Ontario. Bahen is represented in Toronto by Nicholas Metivier Gallery, in Edmonton by Peter Robertson Gallery, and by Claire Oliver Gallery in New York.

2025
Oil paint, graphite, photography, mixed media on wooden panel
24 x 24 x 1.5 inches

Value: $875
Starting Bid: $450

Artist Statement

Breaking down the meaning of images and assembling new contexts is the basis for my work. Since the early 1990s I have used mixed media and photographic assemblage to express an ever evolving imagination. These often take the form of vibrant aesthetic experiences that fuse playful abstractions with the intensified realism of captured images. Artwork begins as a singular process with the object of connecting with others. The removal of collective barriers and the dismantling of our perceptions allow expressions from within to find this commonality. While the end result of my work offers discourse and a large degree of interpretive latitude, my hope is to share with the viewer a sense of creative connection and imaginative exploration.

The creative process for my work often begins with visions of space, balance, and colour. Readily identifiable ideas provide the opportunity for story to be expressed often culminating in reinvented and dramatic resolution. The use of objects in a new conceptual context then offers the viewer a chance to explore their own imagination and creativity. The compositions of my pieces are usually finalized when the manipulated scene provides enough insight to evoke feelings of dislocated familiarity. I endeavour to achieve some level of fragmented fluency in most of my work.

What forms our perception confirms our realities and from within the imagination our realities become limitless. A consistent theme expressed throughout this series is the limitless nature of our imagination and the sometimes difficult task it has of making sense of the new we wish it to reliably seek out. The vivacity and starkness realizes a long held truism of the human psyche; that all aesthetic beauty is free, yet shrouded in meaning that may never fully realize itself. In this series the freedom of our imagination is only restricted by our world, but the further it moves beyond the familiar the more difficult it is to find meaning. It is my hope that this series offers consolidation to this demanding problem while at the same time serving to perpetuate it. Just as we find answers to questions, so too should we continue to ask more.

2022
Oil
36 x 26 x 1.5 inches

Value: $1,900
Starting Bid: $950

Artist Statement

Inspired by the underground city of Derinkuyu in Cappadocia, this work layers impasto brushstrokes into an abstract archaeology. Suggesting chambers, passages, and ancient symbols, it reflects on resilience, hidden histories, and the human instinct to create sanctuaries of meaning beneath the surface.

Artist Biography

Shirra Benson is a Canadian abstract artist whose work explores the intersection of history, symbolism, and contemporary expression. Known for her bold impasto brushwork, gestural mark-making, and palette knife techniques, Benson creates richly layered surfaces that invite viewers into worlds of rhythm, texture, and meaning.

Her current series is inspired by the mysteries of ancient civilizations and humanity’s enduring search for connection. In works such as Derinkuyu, named after the vast underground city in Cappadocia, Benson reimagines architectural forms, languages, and symbolic patterns as vibrant abstractions. The paintings merge historical curiosity with a contemporary visual language, suggesting portals between the past and present.

Benson’s practice is rooted in both personal exploration and universal wonder. By drawing from ancient structures, myths, and signs, her work transcends everyday experience, offering viewers an opportunity to reflect on humanity’s shared history while immersing themselves in otherworldly, meditative spaces. Each canvas becomes both a record of expressive gesture and a reimagining of civilizations long gone yet still resonant.

Through these works, Benson extends her abstract practice into a dialogue with time, culture, and imagination- transforming ancient mysteries into living, dynamic forms.

2025
Acrylic on wooden panel
12 x 12 x 1 inches

Value: $250
Starting Bid: $125

Artist Statement

A leaping silhouette in vivid green merges animal and landscape, embodying vitality and renewal. Surrounded by stylized blooms and layered colour fields, the hare becomes both playful and symbolic. Rooted in folklore and nature’s cycles, it evokes resilience, continuity, and the untamed spirit of spring.

Artist Biography

Dianne Black is an emerging visual artist whose work transforms the landscapes and wildlife of Ontario into bold, layered compositions. Using vibrant, rhythmic fields of colour, she distills flora and fauna into simplified silhouettes that evoke both storytelling and pattern. Horses, swans, rabbits, butterflies, deer, snakes, and wildflowers recur in her work, appearing as archetypal figures within patterned natural scenes.

Her practice is rooted in a deep connection to place, weaving together the vitality of local ecosystems with a sense of myth and memory. The resulting works feel both contemporary and timeless—striking in their graphic clarity, yet lyrical in their celebration of the living world.

2024
Acrylic
36 x 24 x 1.5 inches

Value: $600
Starting Bid: $300

Artist Statement

Painting has taught me to see. It is a way of life for me. Art has always been in my life in different forms sewing, cooking, gardening, weaving, and now painting. My work is a combination of life experiences and a channel to work through emotions.

Artist Biography

I have attended art & design courses at Georgian College Barrie, Sir Sanford Fleming College Halliburton, MacLaren Art Centre Barrie and McMichael Art Gallery (Drawing with Marleen Hilton Moore; acrylics with Lila Lewis Irving, Dennis Cliff, John Leonard, Steve Rose, Emestine Tahidl and John Anderson; watercolour with Kai Lis MacInnis and Graham Scoles; print making with Stephany Rayner and Tim Laurin).

My work has been exhibited at MacLaren’s Off The Hook and Benefactor Art Exchange, The Women’s Show at Orillia’s Museum of Art & History and Double Doors Art Studio in Anten Mills.

2025
Oil and gold leaf
12 x 12 x 1.5 inches

Value: $750
Starting Bid: $375

Artist Statement

My art is informed by the past and acknowledges French, Dutch and Italian still-life masters. Added layers of metal leaf and brightly painted edge colours offer a contemporary influence to these traditional paintings.

Artist Biography

Bradshaw was born in Newfoundland and grew up in Ontario. Her classically realistic style has been evolving over many years. A prolific and well trained artist, she is not constrained by subject matter and paints still-life and figurative works equally. Her work is informed by the old masters and she likes to inject a nod to contemporary practices with unexpected bright colours and metal leaf. Highlights of her exhibition history include the Societé National des Beaux Arts in the Louvre Museum Carousel gallery, the National Gallery in Ottawa as part of a workshop and lecture, the McMichael Museum as part of a lecture, Bravo! channel’s Star Portraits as a contestant and a solo show at the Vermont State Art Centre. She recently became a member of Propellar Artist Collective in Toronto and continues working towards her undergrad and masters degrees at York University as a part-time student. Her many awards at York University include the Willowdale award for painting, the Joan and Martin Goldfarb scholarship the Bertrand Gerstein scholarship and the Art Gallery of York University spotlight award. She continues to exhibit locally where her work is in demand and collected in Canada and internationally.

2025
Oil and gold leaf
12 x 12 x 1.5 inches

Value: $750
Starting Bid: $375

Artist Statement

My art is informed by the past and acknowledges French, Dutch and Italian still-life masters. Added layers of metal leaf and brightly painted edge colours offer a contemporary influence to these traditional paintings.

Artist Biography

Bradshaw was born in Newfoundland and grew up in Ontario. Her classically realistic style has been evolving over many years. A prolific and well trained artist, she is not constrained by subject matter and paints still-life and figurative works equally. Her work is informed by the old masters and she likes to inject a nod to contemporary practices with unexpected bright colours and metal leaf. Highlights of her exhibition history include the Societé National des Beaux Arts in the Louvre Museum Carousel gallery, the National Gallery in Ottawa as part of a workshop and lecture, the McMichael Museum as part of a lecture, Bravo! channel’s Star Portraits as a contestant and a solo show at the Vermont State Art Centre. She recently became a member of Propellar Artist Collective in Toronto and continues working towards her undergrad and masters degrees at York University as a part-time student. Her many awards at York University include the Willowdale award for painting, the Joan and Martin Goldfarb scholarship the Bertrand Gerstein scholarship and the Art Gallery of York University spotlight award. She continues to exhibit locally where her work is in demand and collected in Canada and internationally.

2018
Screenprint
21 x 17 inches

Value: $500
Starting Bid: $250

DID YOU KNOW: Kim Brett was an instructor in the MacLaren’s education department and exhibited her artwork in Sensing and Belonging, 2023.

Artist Statement

Layered mascara wands form a kaleidoscopic pattern, reflecting beauty culture and consumption. Tactile and colourful, they draw attention to how identity is partly shaped through intimate rituals and the disposable objects we use.

Artist Biography

Kim Brett is a visual artist whose practice spanned printmaking, painting and mixed media. She brought an inquisitive lens to everyday disposable and personal items such as bread tags, buttons, mascara wands, toothbrushes and dish soap bottles. To her, these objects quietly reveal intimacy and cultural values. By isolating, layering, and reimagining manufactured fragments, Kim invites viewers to consider beauty, ingenuity and the consequences of consumption.

Her print-based works often use translucent inks, allowing for layered compositions in which images stack like memories. Through repetition and transfer, Kim stages visual conversations between past and present and between permanence and disposability. For her, these juxtapositions mirror how people prepare for uncertainty, continually reshaping daily life in response to the unforeseen.

Kim Brett completed a BFA at the University of Lethbridge following studies in Fine Arts at Georgian College, and later pursued Communications and Culture at the University of Calgary. She taught extensively, volunteered, and was a passionate advocate for the arts. She exhibited widely in the Barrie region and beyond.

Kim passed away in May 2025. Her work continues to resonate as both a meditation on fragility and resilience and a testament to the quiet power of material culture in contemporary art.

2025
Earthenware clay
5.25 x 7 x 4.25 inches

Value: $400
Starting Bid: $200

Artist Statement 

I love working with my hands. Clay’s willingness to be transformed, both in form and texture, makes it a perfect medium for exploring the concept of Transportation.

Artist Biography

Nadine Carr is a ceramic artist specializing in hand built, slip cast and press mold functional works and art pieces.

A graduate of the Ontario College of Art and Design, Nadine was awarded an additional year apprenticing in Florence Italy, further developing her artistic vision. Her ceramic pieces span from functional serving items to ceramic sculptures. Nadine’s latest fantastical work explores many facets of transportation.

2024
Oil on birch ply
20 x 20 x 1.5 inches

Value: $900
Starting Bid: $450

Artist Statement

Teresa has a passion for the practice of perception, awareness and stillness. She explores the ideas of the relative vs the essential nature of the phenomenal world in her work through a minimalist lens and a nonrepresentational interpretation. Reduction and simplicity are important perspectives that guide her creative process.

Artist Biography

Teresa Cullen, BFA MA, studied visual arts at Concordia University, Montreal. She has been an exhibiting artist since 1979 and has her artwork in many personal and corporate collections. Her studio practice is in Oro-Medonte, Ontario. Since 1995 she spends as much time as she can in northern New Mexico, where she was an artist in residence with the Wurlitzer Foundation in Taos in 2004. The vast space of the southwest region as well as its generous historical artist presence has helped to shape her post-minimalist practice.

2022
Oil on linen
8 x 8 x 0.75 inches

Value: $500
Starting Bid: $250

Artist Biography

Born in Kirkland Lake, Ontario, Tanya Cunnington now lives and works in Rama First Nation. She earned her Associate’s Degree in Drawing and Painting from the Ontario College of Art and Design in 2001, where she was awarded the Eric Freifeld Award for Excellence in Figurative Art and participated in the Florence off-campus studies program.

Tanya has received numerous awards and grants throughout her career, including the Canada Council for the Arts Research and Creation Grant (2019), the Cleeve Horne Purchase Award from the Orillia Museum of Art & History (2018), and the John Hartman Award from the MacLaren Art Centre (2015). She is also known for her collaborative practice, the Birdbath Collaboration, created with her partner, artist Bewabon Shilling. Her work has been featured in Carte Blanche Volume II: Painting (Magenta Foundation) and reviewed in Canadian Art magazine.

From 2007 to 2018, Tanya exhibited with Toronto’s Loop Gallery, and she continues to exhibit widely across Ontario, including shows at the MacLaren Art Centre (Barrie), be contemporary (Innisfil), the Orillia Museum of Art & History (Orillia), and Quest Gallery (Midland).

2025
Oil on canvas
13.5 x 22 x 1.25 inches

Value: $1,600
Starting Bid: $800

DID YOU KNOW: Gary Evans was an instructor at Georgian College School of Fine Arts from 2000-2023 and had a solo exhibition, Farther Afield, at the MacLaren Art Centre in 2016.

Artist Statement

Painting the landscape is a vehicle for personal exploration. Finding new ways to relate the experience and phenomena of looking and the process of perceiving has been an often revelatory practice.

While the inspiration for my work are the patterns and architecture of the natural world, painting is also a way of creating a personal refuge, a malleable imaginary space, one of reenchantment. I hope that people are able to spend time to discover some mediative potential or their own personal geographies inside them.

Artist Biography

Gary Evans was born in Weston-super-Mare, England and resides in Alliston, Ontario. An established Canadian painter, his works challenge traditional notions of perception and experience of the Canadian landscape. Evans states, “abstraction for me has always been extrapolated from the real. In using it that way I hope to talk about the phenomena of perception that we all
experience.”

A graduate of the Ontario College of Art, Evans has been the subject of several survey exhibitions: Seeing Things 2000-2001 various locations across Canada, Station: Art Gallery of Windsor 2008, Farther Afield, MacLaren Art Centre, 2016. Gary Evans has been represented by Paul Petro Contemporary Art since 1995. Between 2000-2023 Gary Evans was an instructor at Georgian College, School of Fine Arts, Barrie ON.

2025
Oil on canvas
20 x 24 x 1.5 inches

Value: $1,500
Starting Bid: $750

Artist Statement

Painting’s historical and visual language has always been at the core of my work as an artist. While trying to understand our relationships to the natural world and each other, this legacy of painting place and space has often become a catalyst for film, sculpture, performance or drawings. Recently, I have been able to dive back into this work and explore new ways to think about how, what, and why I paint, and to push my practice without any real concerns over the painting’s immediate success or failure, or my own for that matter. It feels like the beginning of a grand adventure.

Artist Biography

Michael Farnan is a multidisciplinary artist and educator, living and working in Simcoe County, ON. He has worked as a sessional professor at Georgian College since 2017, where he is currently coordinator of the Visual Digital Media Arts Program. Farnan’s work aims at unsettling Canada’s history of colonialism and dominant Eurocentric ideologies of place and space. His exhibitions, videos, and performances have been shown throughout Canada. Recent exhibitions include his participation in the group show Gardenship and State at Museum London and Thames Art Gallery, as well as a solo exhibition for Canoe Fight: From Reverence to Redress, at the MacLaren Art Centre. His work has been supported by the Canada Council of the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. Farnan holds a Studio-based Ph.D. in Art and Visual Culture from Western University.

2025
Mixed media using sardine can
4 x 3 x 1 inches

Value: $300
Starting Bid: $150

Artist Statement

The character that peeks out of this recycled sardine tin wears a mask-like face, appearing to conceal its true nature. A dwelling is associated with permanence, stability and a sense of place. My ‘dwellings’, however, are constantly moving and express the passage of time: of being found, used, recycled, and remade, ultimately fluid.

Artist Biography

Nahúm Flores was born in Danlí, Honduras and immigrated to Canada at age 17, after living in Mexico and the United States. He holds a BFA in Drawing & Painting, and an MFA in Interdisciplinary Art, Media & Design from OCAD University. He has been awarded grants from the Pollock–Krasner Foundation (NYC), the Ontario Arts Council, the Toronto Arts Council and the Sustainable Arts Foundation (San Francisco). His paintings and drawing installations have been widely exhibited in North America, Europe and Latin America. He is co-founder and active member of Z’otz* Collective.

Growing up in Honduras, Nahúm was exposed to a mixture of Catholic and Indigenous beliefs reflected in daily life. The syncretism of Honduran traditions – informed by social and environmental issues – has affected his perception of life. His mixed media work reflects and explores these influences. Its unique fusion of drawing and matter is also intuitively processed. In this way, Nahúm can give voice to his subconscious, creating expressive figures or amorphous forms that belie his sense of humour.

2017
Cast bronze, steel, wood
22 x 18 x 18 inches

Value: $6,000
Starting Bid: $3,000

DID YOU KNOW: Ted Fullerton has a permanent artwork, Ascension, installed outside of the MacLaren. Ascend-Transcend (maquette model), donated to this year’s OFF THE HOOK silent auction, is a maquette for a realized work of public sculpture located at the entrance to the town of Kagawong on Manitoulin Island.

Artist Statement

Learning From the Past, Imagining a Shared Future:

It was a distinct honour to have been asked to create a significant sculpture at the entrance to the town of Kagawong on Manitoulin Island that would reference, Reconciliation. The visual inference of the sculpture is to imagine, inspire and realize the ability to ascend and transcend our relationship from the past to a new future in reconciling humanist ideals.

This sculpture indicates that reconciliation is an upward actuality, moving towards a post-colonial reality while inferring and considering the past, present and future – the three cultural communities, the French, the English and the First Nations; including the First Nations (Ojibwe, Odawa and Pottawottami) as well as our relationship to earth, air, water as well as body, mind and spirit.

Artist Biography

Ted Fullerton is a Canadian artist who works in painting, drawing, printmaking and sculpture and has achieved awards in all four media. As a figurative artist his work is symbolic in nature. The conceptual foundation and ideology within his artistic practise is humanist in nature emphasizing the notion of belief, purpose and relationships: being and becoming.

His work is exhibited nationally and internationally and is represented in numerous private and public collections. He has participated in over 70 solo exhibitions and 115 group exhibitions. He was awarded, Excellence in the Arts by the City of Barrie in 2010, the Georgian College Board of Governors Award of Excellence in 2012 and inducted into the Royal Canadian Academy in 2009. He has been commissioned for a number of public sculpture commissions – the City of Guelph and the City of Kitchener – St. Albert, Alberta – Manitoulin Island: a sculpture to recognize Reconciliation – and the City of Waterloo to mention a few. The Royal Botanical Gardens in Hamilton acquired and installed a large permanent sculpture in 2019. In a ½ hour documentary titled, Street Sauce – Public Art in the Waterloo Region three public sculptures of the artist are featured.

Fullerton was invited by the European Cultural Centre to exhibit in Venice, Italy during the 2022 Venice Biennale at the exhibition venues of Palazzo Bembo, Palazzo Mora and Marinaressa Gardens. As an educator, he was professor and head of the Fine Art Program at Georgian College, School of Design and Visual Art from 1978-2013.

2022
Oil on canvas
18 x 18 x 1.5 inches

Value: $980
Starting Bid: $500

Artist Statement

As usual, the colour concept for this nature-life arrangement developed spontaneously, and my vase and the neighbours’ flowers (everyone gladly participated) formed the composition. Everyone was happy with the result.

Artist Biography

Every time you change jobs, it feels like a new beginning. After graduating from the Moscow Design Academy, I worked as a fashion designer, first in Russia and then in Latvia. Canada became our new motherland in 2000. After completing my second education in Canada, I worked as an interior decorator for over 20 years.

My third rebirth was the best because I strongly desired to create artwork in the impressionist style.

As a fashion designer in the past, I used to draw clothes with a pen or pencil, but throughout my professional life, I have dreamed of creating oil paintings.

Oil painting is a pleasure and a way to express my inner world and emotions.

I am impressed by the possibilities of fine art in showing beauty to everybody who wants to see it.

Acrylic and fabric
16 x 5.50 inches

Value: $200
Starting Bid: $100

Artist Statement

Georgian Bay is teeming with fish who call the Bay their home. These Fish a Trios are Tourist Fish who enjoy our Bay.

Artist Biography

Ingi Gould’s training as an actress led her to become the fabric artist she is today. While acting in Stratford she was exposed to wonderful costumes, props and sets. Shortly after moving to Simcoe County in 1971, Ingi started creating her own designs in fabric. She uses cotton fabric to make her original designs which she then carefully sculpts, hand paints and glazes. Ingi has participated in many craft shows, group art shows and her work sold in various retail outlets and galleries. Ingo has also taught in Toronto for the Art in the Schools program, and given workshops in galleries. She is featured in Paula Gianturco’s book “Grandmother Powers.”

2025
Risograph print
10.5 x 10.5 x 2.5 inches

Value: $350
Starting Bid: $175

DID YOU KNOW: Katie Green co-founded Spare Room, a studio space and art gallery downtown Barrie. She was the recipient of the John Hartman Award in 2022. She exhibited Translations in Vision at the MacLaren Art Centre in 2025.

Artist Statement

This work was part of the series created for the exhibition Translations in Vision at the MacLaren Art Centre. In it I explored the act of transformation, of materials, processes and ways of seeing. Textile patterns and textures became halftone dots and layered colours through the Risograph machine. The act of translating one medium into another comes with an element of chance, where the outcome isn’t guaranteed. These sometimes beautiful imperfections mirror the way that seeing and understanding are mutable, evolving with age, experience, distance and light. Having experienced recent changes in my own eyesight, changing how I am able to create art, the beauty in imperfection holds special meaning for me.

Gesturing hands and arrows symbolize guideposts and decisions as I navigate these challenges and attempt to find the beauty in every situation. “Layered Gestural Quilt E” is one of my favourite from this series. Part way through printing I had the idea to use fabric prints as the background as well as on the print itself. The play of pattern on pattern feels quilt-like and gives the piece extra dimensionality. I also limited the palette to highlight my favourite colour: fluorescent pink.

Artist Biography

Katie Green is a local Barrie artist with a passion for community and bringing art into all areas of life, ranging from public to personal and useful to decorative. Building community, sharing experiences and supporting the next generation of artists keep her inspired in her own art practice. She operates from the idea that art is an experience that can positively impact people’s everyday lives. She works across multiple mediums including textiles, pen and ink, and printmaking, most recently the Risograph.

Pushing the boundaries between different mediums as well as playing with the line between useful design and decorative art informs her art practice. Her work is playful with a sense of whimsy and she is drawn to bright colours especially fluorescent pink. She uses recognizable symbols and icons like gesturing hands and arrows as well as text to explore ideas relating to the human experience. Her art has an element of advocacy as well as humour. Her journey to becoming a practicing artist has been long and winding. She believes every diversion, including working in construction, playing varsity basketball, living in a ski town and most recently health challenges affecting her energy and vision, has added to her ability to navigate being an artist and increased her ability to support the arts community.

Copper plate and paint
12 x 12 x 1

Value: $1,000
Starting Bid: $500

Artist Statement

This painting was inspired by the vibrant street life of Paris, France. The image of a street musician was initially captured and used to create a series of drypoint etchings on a copper plate. Over time, the same copper plate became the foundation for a painting featuring the same figure.

The natural luminosity of the copper was intentionally preserved and integrated into the background, allowing it to reflect light and enhance the color tones. This approach adds depth and warmth to the composition, while also honoring the raw, textured quality of the original etching process.

Artist Biography

Sadko studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Sarajevo, Bosnia, earned his MFA at the University of Belgrade, Yugoslavia (1984) and arrived in Canada in 1993. Since his arrival from Bosnia, Sadko has participated in over sixty exhibitions in public galleries and artist-run centres across Canada. He is the recipient of visual arts grants from Toronto Art Council, the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts. Sadko continues to explore identity, and its cultural and social implications, with an extensive portraiture-based body of work using mixed media and collage, and an array of references to popular culture.

2021
Brass
3 x 9 x 5 inches

Value: $1,800
Starting Bid: $900

DID YOU KNOW: Kara Hamilton is a member of the curatorial collective, CMBT, that commissioned, Between Leaf and Light, a six-channel sound installation by artist Scott Rogers, on view in the main-level waiting room of the Hudson Regional Cancer Centre at Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre (RVH) from July to October 2025.

Artist Statement

Everything and nothing is precious. This paradox is the lens through which I explore how context, history, durability and material agency inform shifts in cultural value. I’m especially interested in how material, natural and otherwise, operates as a vital force with memory and consequence. Ultimately, my curious consideration of both functional and non-functional currency forms the foundation of my practice: an inquisitive tribute to the vitality, perceived value and volatility of the stuff that defines our cultural understanding.

Placeholder /plās′hōl″dər/: Something used or included temporarily or as a substitute for something that is not known or must remain generic; that which holds, denotes or reserves a place for something to come later. (The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition)

Artist Biography

Kara Hamilton has exhibited nationally and internationally at spaces such as: Sculpture Milwaukee, Milwaukee (2021); TOPS Gallery, Memphis (2021); Salon 94, New York (2003, 2007, 2011, 2012, 2020); Art Gallery of Ontario (2019); Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art, Winnipeg (2017); EFA Project Space, New York (2016); Tate Liverpool, Liverpool (2015); Aspen Museum, Aspen (2015); Kunstverein Amsterdam, Amsterdam (2014); Taut and Tame, Berlin (2013); and the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH (2004).

She lives and works in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and is represented by Cooper Cole Gallery.

2023
Oil on birch panel
10 x 12 inches

Value: $6,600
Starting Bid: $3,300

DID YOU KNOW: John Hartman sponsored the John Hartman Award facilitated by the MacLaren Art Centre. This annual award granted an emerging artist more time in the studio for research, experimentation, and the development of new work. He received the Order of Canada in 2020, the highest rank of recognition a person can receive in Canada.

Artist Statement

Norgate Inlet is one of the many bays and inlets along the eastern shoreline of Georgian Bay.

It lies south of Britt at the mouth of the Magnetewan River and north of the Naiscoot River.

This is where I have painted every summer for the past 40 years. This painting is a view of a windy morning looking southwest across the the many low lying islands that form the mouth of the inlet.

Artist Biography

John Hartman was born in 1950 in Midland Ontario, and studied Fine Art at McMaster University.

After leaving art school in 1974, John lived with Andrew and Pat Trudeau at Manitou Marina on an outer island of Georgian Bay. This was Hartman’s finishing school.

He went on to establish his reputation with the exhibition “Painting the Bay” at the McMichael Canadian Collection in 1993. These were large-scale paintings of Georgian Bay, aerial views of the landscape, painted with thick, juicy paint. In the skies Hartman painted stories about the places depicted.

Hartman continued to experiment with works that combined figurative, narrative and landscape. He received national exposure with the exhibition and book “Big North” which toured Canada between 1999 and 2002.

Hartman’s path of painting the intimate and intertwined relationship between people and place, took a turn in 2003. He began to paint aerial views of cities as living organisms. These paintings made up the exhibition and book ”Cities” which toured Canada and internationally from 2007-2009.

From 2014 to 2020 Hartman painted a series of portraits of Canadian authors in the landscapes or cityscapes that they love. The resulting exhibition of paintings began its tour across Canada at the McMichael Canadian Collection in March 2020.

2015
Digital chromogenic print
18 x 22 inches

Value: $2,900
Starting Bid: $1,450

Artist Statement

I took this photograph of Carly Butler’s studio in 2015 as part of my ongoing series of Artist Studio’s. Her studio was in Halifax. Her work focuses on subject matter related to maritime navigation. I loved the classic east coast architecture of her modest studio and the sparseness of her process.

Artist Biography

Joseph Hartman is a self-taught photographer who lives and works in Hamilton, ON. After receiving an MSc in Kinesiology and being accepted into medical school, Hartman decided to pursue a career as an artist. He apprenticed with Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky and has received numerous awards, including grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. His work can be found in several important collections including the Art Gallery of Hamilton, The McMicheal Canadian Art Collection, McMaster Museum of Art, the Agnes Etherington Art Centre and the MacLaren Art Centre.

2025
Acrylic paint on Yupo paper and Duralar film in three layers of glass
19 x 20 x 2.25 inches

Value: $2,650
Starting Bid: $1,325

DID YOU KNOW: Katharine Harvey was commissioned to create a large-scale painting for the newly renovated food court at the Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre (RVH). She generously donated the sketch for this work to the OFF THE HOOK silent auction.

Artist Statement

For public artworks such as RVH in Barrie, I create acrylic sketches on Yupo paper, with three layers of painted transparent film on top to achieve 3-D effects that emphasize depth and the interactive quality of radiant colours.

Artist Biography

Katharine Harvey is a Canadian conceptual painter and multi-media artist based in Toronto. Her 38-year artistic practice encompasses a range of mediums, including painting, installation, and public art on a monumental scale. A bold and energetic palette characterizes all her multi-layered works.

Throughout her career, Katharine has switched naturally between mediums, allowing her paintings to inform her public artwork and vice versa. This process inspired her to create a body of work that includes multi-layered acrylic paintings, recycled plastic installations, monumental public installations in mosaic and hand-painted or digitally printed glass, kinetic sculptures, and an illuminated drone show.

Katharine Harvey’s public artworks include a 15-foot-long painting for the Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre (Barrie) permanent art collection, as well as art glass and mosaics for Toronto’s Chester Subway Station, hand-painted glass windows for Great Gulf, and digitally printed glass for Concord Adex.

The artist has exhibited in both commercial galleries and museums throughout North America and Germany, such as the Canadian Embassy in Washington, D.C., the MacLaren Art Centre (Barrie, Ontario), the Art Gallery of Regina, Nicholas Metivier Gallery (Toronto), Galerie Borchardt (Hamburg) and Galerie Clara Maria Sels (Düsseldorf). Her work is part of corporate art collections, such as the Bank of Montreal, Canada Council Art Bank, Ontario Hospital Association, CAMH, Osler Hoskin & Harcourt, Royal Bank of Canada, Scotiabank, and TD Canada Trust, as well as private collections worldwide.

Katharine earned a BFA at Queen’s University and an MFA at the University of Victoria, B.C.

2024
Archival endura photographs into collage
32 x 32 x 1 inches

Value: $800
Starting Bid: $400

Artist Statement:

These eyes,
Myself now looking through these eyes
Using images and words
Having lived a longer time of joys and
Sorrows as life is lived.
Yet the same being peering through these
eyes still sees.
In the late night
early morning
days of sun or darkness
cold of winter
heat of summer
mildness of many in-betweens
I see.

Artist Biography

Henrickson was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1942. She moved to San Francisco in 1965, and immigrated to Toronto, Canada 1968 as a dual citizen and studied drawing and textile at the Brooklyn Museum, F.I.T., Art Students League. In 1969, she turned her Toronto loft into a live-in studio artist run gallery.

She has produced 2 artists books. The camera has been an extension of her seeing and creativity. Her work has been exhibited at the Jane Corkin Gallery in Toronto 1988 to 2008, and twice at the Banff Centre for the Arts. She’s exhibited work locally in Orillia, Midland and Anton Mills. She lives in Tiny Township, surrounded by trees and the bay since 2000.

Her recent works are collage, using larger black/white and colour prints. She has written 3 chapter books and has been published in several poetry publications.

2023
Archival photographic print
36 x 24 x 2 inches

Value: $400
Starting Bid: $200

Artist Statement

Ian has been documenting the rural existence through his landscape photography which these photographs are part of.

Artist Biography

Ian James Hopkins is a contemporary photographer situated in Simcoe County. Ian’s main focus is Landscape and Portraiture. His photographs features a grimy formalism which can be found in throughout Ian’s work. Ian graduated with honours from The School of Photographic Arts: Ottawa (SPAO) and has won the Applied Arts Award for his photographs.

2025
Acrylic and archival ink
12 x 12 x 1.5 inches

Value: $225
Starting Bid: $125

Artist Statement

Just a little north, a fringe of trees sits securely embedded atop a rocky shoreline.

Artist Biography

Silvija is a visual artist whose work embodies contemporary landscapes and colourful resins. She studied Visual Arts at York University and holds a Graphic Arts degree from the Toronto
Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson). She has exhibited in juried, solo, and group shows.

Believing in the importance of giving back to the arts community, Silvija served on the Executive Board of the Richmond Hill Group of Artists, has volunteered on several exhibition committees, and
has conducted workshops at St. Clement’s School as a guest artist.

Silvija is an active member of Muskoka Arts & Crafts. She received an Award of Excellence for Coast High at the Spring Members’ Show. Judges Lezlie Winemaker and Ian Bodnaryk remarked, ”Great use of colour and well executed use of materials.” She has been a returning exhibitor at the Muskoka Arts & Crafts Annual Summer Show.

Silvija was awarded Best in Show for Spirited at the Richmond Hill Group of Artist’s 44th Annual Juried Show. Juror Brian Smith wrote, ”This is such an exuberant and fresh painting that shows
great skill and confidence.’1 Juror Kal Honey added, ”an accomplished blend of observational skills and expressive chops.” Silvija has joined her colleagues as Artist in Residence at the Mill
Pond Gallery, collaborating on ideas and experimenting with different processes to inspire new work.

Her painting, View from the Escarpment, was juried into the exhibition at the Maclaren Art Centre entitled Vibrant Vistas. She has participated in the Benefactor Art Exchange and Off the Hook since 2018.

2025
Papier-mâché with chrome finish on wood base
20 x 3 x 3 inches

Value: $500
Starting Bid: $250

Artist Statement

A faceless feminine figure embodying resilience and silence—reflecting identity in flux, yet anchored in timeless strength.

Artist Biography

I am an Iranian-Canadian visual artist based in Barrie, Ontario. My practice spans sculpture, painting, and photography, with a particular focus on sculptural forms that explore resilience, silence, and presence in the human figure. I hold a PhD in Art Research from Iran and have been active in the arts for more than two decades. Since moving to Canada, I have continued developing my practice while engaging with the community through teaching and cultural projects at the MacLaren Art Centre and beyond.

My work often depicts elongated, faceless female figures—archetypal presences that invite reflection on identity and strength within contemporary society. I work with diverse materials, including papier-mâché, cement, plaster, and mixed media, transforming fragile substances into forms that suggest permanence. For me, creating is a way to explore transformation while opening space for dialogue.

n.d.
Stoneware thrown and altered
48 x 7 inches

Value: $620
Starting Bid: $310

Artist Statement & Biography

Roger Kerslake completed his studies in Fine Art and Pottery in England, where he taught for nine years before emigrating to Canada in 1970. He resumed his role as potter/teacher and is known for creating finely crafted functional ware, unique hand-built organic vessels and textural murals in both stoneware and porcelain.

Roger’s work has been shown in many group exhibitions, both nationally and internationally, resulting in a number of awards for excellence in the craft. He now spends his time doing what he likes to do: potting, painting and playing.

1994
Terra cotta
39 x 10 x 9.5 inches

Value: $1,200
Starting Bid: $600

Artist Statement & Biography

Heather Driver Kerslake works mainly in terra cotta, producing pieces that are whimsical, often mythical, and sometimes humorous. Her work involves functional pottery and sculptural pieces, ranging in scale from majolica-decorated wine goblets to larger hand-built narrative sculptures.

Heather graduated from Alfred University, New York. Her work is in numerous private collections and public galleries, and has been exhibited widely.

2020
Ink jet print on hahnemühle agave
19 5/8 x 16 5/8 inches

Value: $2,000
Starting Bid: $1,000

Artist Statement

Using commonplace objects, Kristiina Lahde’s practice works in collaboration with her materials. Found or everyday objects, such as paper clips, rulers, library catalogue cards, and even blank sheets of ordinary computer paper are altered or re-assembled, in order to produce works in various media; including sculpture, installation, collage and photography. These everyday materials are modified or repositioned, often using geometry and pattern, to produce uncanny and unconventional new forms. Her intervening actions transform these materials and yet preserve, or even magnify, our ordinary experience of them.

Outer Edges 8 was made by folding multiple straight lines across a sheet of ordinary computer paper. The result is a web of intersecting lines that overlap until a circular relief emerges. This delicate sculptural construction is then photographed in natural light to create dramatic shadows and highlights across the folded surface of the paper. Line and shadow combine to produce an image that reflects on the absence as well as the presence of the circle.

Artist Biography

Kristiina Lahde is an artist from Toronto, Canada. Lahde received her BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 1999. Since then she has been exhibiting across Canada and in the USA. In 2025 Kristiina attended the Annandale Artist Residency in PEI and the Art & Walking residency at Gibraltar Point, Toronto Island. Recently Kristiina’s work was featured at Season Art Fair in Detroit and at Contemporary Calgary, AB. In 2026 Lahde will exhibit with Latcham Art Centre in Whitchurch-Stouffville, ON. Her works are held in numerous private, corporate and public collections including the Canada Council Art Bank. Kristiina Lahde is represented by MKG127 in Toronto.

2012
Ink and pencil on Somerset paper
28.5 x 28.5 inches

Photo credit: Toni Hafkenscheid
Value: $2,300
Starting Bid: $1,150

DID YOU KNOW: Colette Laliberté exhibited at The Campus Gallery, Georgian College, in Neither Here Nor There: Drawing on the Edge of Perception in 2023.

Artist Statement

About the work Structures from the series Construct:

What drives us to seek information? What happens to the knowledge we accumulate? How does the human brain process information?

Reflecting on these thoughts, I pursued my interest in concept-based abstraction with this series of ink paintings on paper. Compressed geometric shapes move beyond a 15 x 15 cm centre square, become distorted, transformed, muted and/or disappear into a white sheet of paper. They are “Construct,” representing the information and knowledge we absorb and eventually lose, remember and … forget.

Structures is an intuitive response to living in a state of constant stimulation.

Artist Biography

Colette Laliberté is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans drawing, painting, photography, and site-specific installations. Her work delves into the visual language of abstraction, intertwining historical, cultural, and personal narratives through diverse processes and materials. Born in Sherbrooke, Québec, she relocated to Toronto in 1985 after participating in the Young Artists in Residence program at the Banff Centre for the Arts. She earned a BFA from Université du Québec à Montréal and an MFA from the University of Windsor.

Laliberté has exhibited extensively across Canada and internationally, with her site-specific installations engaging with the history and architecture of their environments to evoke connections to space and time. In addition to her artistic practice, Laliberté has also curated numerous exhibitions.

Throughout her career, she has participated in residencies in France, Spain, New York, and various locations in Canada. Laliberté has received grants and awards from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, the Toronto Arts Council, and Québec’s Ministry of Cultural Affairs. In academia, she served as an Associate Professor at OCAD University, teaching drawing, painting, and installation, while also holding administrative roles within the Faculty of Art.

2018
Oil on paper
16 x 12 inches

Value: $2,400
Starting Bid: $1,200

DID YOU KNOW: Derek Liddington created a site-specific mural for the MacLaren Art Centre’s Carnegie Room, Their horizon was mountain, their distance reveals, as part of the City of Barrie’s public art exhibition, Seeds to Sow in 2024.

Artist Statement

Light is absorbed by objects. Light is reflected off objects. Light, scattered, broken, uneven, and imperfect is interpreted by us optically into forms that are recognizable and familiar. Light reveals. This same light reflects off the surface of a painting. Light is absorbed by the painting. Light is reflected off the painting. The painting both depicts a subject (light) and is dependant on that subject (light).

Artist Biography

Liddington (1981) lives and works in Toronto, Canada.

After obtaining his BFA from Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he focused on video and performance, Liddington completed an MFA at Western University, graduating in 2007. Liddington’s work holds a continuous interest in cultural memory and its iterations through abstraction, representation and modernist forms of visual language.

He is the recipient of numerous awards and grants, including the Toronto Arts Council, Ontario Arts Council. Most recently Liddington received the Canada Council creation grant for his project “The trees weep, The mountains still, the bodies rust” presented by the Musée d’art de Joliette. This exhibition is a touring project, having been exhibited at the Richmond Art Gallery (2022/23) and at Contemporary Calgary (2024).

Liddington’s work has been shown internationally, including performances in Athens, Greece and Onagawa, Japan, and select exhibitions of his painting/installation work in Toronto (AGO), Madrid (ARCO), Berlin (Art Berlin Contemporary), and New York (NADA). Liddington has had recent solo presentations at Cambridge Galleries (Ontario, Canada), Southern Alberta Art Gallery (Lethbridge, Alberta), AKA Artist Run Center (Saskatoon, Saskatchewan), and the Art Gallery of York University (Ontario, Canada). Liddington has had multiple publications on his work, most recently a catalogue published jointly by the SAAG and AGYU with texts by Emelie Chhangur.

A central part of Liddington’s practice is his use of residencies as a means of developing ideas of space and place. These include residencies at the Glenfiddich Artist Residency Program (Dufftown, Scotland), AGNES Etherington Art Centre (Kingston, Canada), Art Gallery of York University (Toronto, ON), AKA artist-run (Saskatoon, SK) and Onagawa AIR (Japan).

2024
Acrylic on canvas
30 x 40 x 2.5 inches

Value: $1,500
Starting Bid: $750

Artist Statement

My work is intuitive, relying on the moment and how the medium reacts to the surface. Either painting abstractly with subtle expressions of familiarity or with a touch of realism, I hope to encourage the viewer to experience the moment as their own.

Artist Biography

Joanne Lomas is a long time resident of Simcoe County. Her work is focused mainly on landscape. She is an avid camper, hiker and traveler and loves to explore her surroundings with paint and photography. Joanne attained a BFA through Georgian College and Thompson Rivers University as a mature student. She hasn’t looked back and continues her education and love of creating. For a few years she worked from her studio in Alton Mills Art Centre connecting with art collectors and interested visitors. Joanne runs workshops engaging others to find enjoyment in creating art. Her work can be seen at various times in many galleries throughout Ontario.

2025
Pastel
16 x 20 inches

Value: $300
Starting Bid: $150

Artist Statement & Biography

“Determined”.

Explosive movement, vibrant colour and essential form are what I want to express these days as a counterweight to the dark forces pressing in on us. Salmon fighting upstream, expending every shred of lifeforce to reproduce before they die and become life-giving food for eagle, bear, wolf and human.

This scene captures that dramatic moment in natureʼs dance of light and dark. Nothing is lost; light prevails.

Feed the angels of light.

Artist Biography

Developing my identity as a poet and painter in watercolour and pastel has been the dark gift of serious injury . I am grateful for this unexpected “window” back into the world, and delight in the satisfaction making art brings.

2025
Sennelier oil pastels
10 x 8 inches

Value: $800
Starting Bid: $400

Artist Statement

Aftermath: Series: Consequences of war. The bombarding of despair, deceptions, hostilities flash across my ‘screens’, embroiled, unable to escape … this ‘work’ carries the scars.

Artist Biography

Jeanette Luchese is an Italian-Canadian settler, visual artist, graphic designer, illustrator, educator, director, and curator who works across drawing, painting, fresco, printmaking, and sculpture. She is a graduate of the School of Design and Visual Art at Georgian College (Barrie) and Sheridan College School of Design (Oakville), and furthered her studies in Florence, Italy, through OCAD University’s Summer Studio Master Class (2019). She currently resides in Innisfil, Ontario.

Luchese exhibits internationally, with current work featured in Bard, Italy, as part of the Global Human Rights 2025 event. Her previous exhibitions include the Palazzo dell’Annunziata (Matera, Italy), Fondazione Opera Campana dei Caduti (Rovereto, Italy), as well as shows in New York, Boston, and Germany. Regionally, her work has been presented at numerous public galleries including the MacLaren Art Centre (Barrie), Quest Art Gallery (Midland), Orillia Museum of Art & History (Orillia), the Campus Gallery (Barrie), Georgina Art Gallery (Georgina), Toronto, and Hamilton.

She is a recipient of multiple Ontario Arts Council and City of Barrie Culture Department grants. Internationally, she received the 2014 Great Visual Arts Golden Eagle Trophy – Award of Honour (Salerno, Italy) and the 2015 Kandinsky Award of Creativity (Salerno, Italy).

Luchese’s work has been published in Abstract | Ext: A First Approximation to Abstract Literature by David Quiles Guilló, and she was shortlisted for the 2015 Gwendolyn MacEwen Exile Poetry Competition. Her poem “From There to Here” appeared in ELQ/Exile: The Literary Quarterly (July 2016 edition).

She created the 2018 Barrie Art Awards statuettes and several public art installations, including What Day Is It? (Port Huron, Michigan, USA), The Gathering #8 at The Verandahs Bed & Breakfast by the Lake (Oro, Ontario), Easy Rider (Barrie, Ontario), and Winds West (installed at the Ontario Water Centre, Clearwater Farms, Georgina, Ontario, 2024).

2024
Gouache and gesso on paper
15 x 22 3/4 inches

Value: $6,000
Starting Bid: $3,000

Photo courtesy of Landon Mackenzie and Nicholas Metivier Gallery.

DID YOU KNOW: Landon Mackenzie exhibited Landon Mackenzie: Parallel Journey at The MacLaren Art Centre in 2018. She received the Governor General’s Award in Visual Art in 2017, Canada’s foremost distinction for excellence in visual and media arts.

Artist Statement

I am known for making large-scale, immersive paintings in my studios, though what occupies me when travelling are small works; usually in watercolour, inks, or gouache on a variety of papers. Citizens of Barrie may have seen some of these exhibited in Landon Mackenzie: Parallel Journey at The McLaren in 2018. The piece here is from a series I made in 2024 in Oaxaca, Mexico; a place of historical pigments and inspiring colour. The composition plays off my Time Machine series, which are large paintings filled with coloured circles.

Artist Biography

With a career spanning five decades, Landon Mackenzie’s paintings have been exhibited widely and are held in significant collections such as the National Gallery of Canada, Art Gallery of Ontario, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, McMichael Collection of Canadian Art, among others. Based in Vancouver since 1986, Mackenzie is Professor Emerita at Emily Carr University and received the Governor General’s Award in 2017. Notable exhibitions include Landon Mackenzie: Nervous Centre (2012-13) at the Esker Foundation in Calgary and Emily Carr and Landon Mackenzie: Wood Chopper and the Monkey at the Vancouver Art Gallery (2014-2015). She is represented in Canada by Nicholas Metivier Gallery in Toronto.

2025
Oil and acrylic on birch panel
24 x 24 x 1.5 inches

Value: $4,000
Starting Bid: $2,000

Artist Statement

My work is grounded in concepts of landscape with a particular emphasis on trees as a subject. I see trees as expressive and present them as analogies for the human condition.

Artist Biography

Robert Marchessault (1953 Montreal) has been a practicing professional artist since 1978. He maintains a studio in Oro-Medonte ON. The artist has a long exhibition career both Nationally and Internationally. His work is widely collected and can be found in private and corporate collections. Marchessault is represented in Canada by Bau-Xi Galleries (Toronto & Vancouver) and Galerie de Bellefeuille (Montreal), in the US by Foster White Galleries (Seattle) and McLarry Fine Art (Santa Fe).

2025
Laser cut steel charger plate with found objects
11.5 inches

Value: $1,500
Starting Bid: $750

DID YOU KNOW: John McEwen was commissioned by the City of Barrie to create a public sculpture, The Horn and the Heart, at Meridian Place in 2020. He received the Order of Canadain 2019, the highest rank of recognition a person can receive in Canada.

Artist Statement

This is the eighth work in an open series of charger plates  that began in 2018. Each work juxtaposes a constellation (the infinite) with a found object.

In this case the found object is the shell of a Rolls Royce Phantom V made by Dinky Toys in England. As die cast scale model vehicles, dinky toys were produced from 1934 to 1979.

A number of celebrities and politicians were Phantom V owners.(see Wikipedia,). In Canadian terms, Ronnie Hawkins owned a Rolls Royce Silver Cloud.

Artist Biography

John McEwan has a degree in Fine Arts from the University of Lethbridge, Alberta. He is recognised both internationally and across Canada for his many site-specific installations and public commissions. In 2019, he was a recipient of the Order of Canada.

McEwen is best known for his inventive approach to ‘sculpting’ animals as vehicles of the imagination. Whether flame cut from a massive steel slab or composed of a skin of steel stars, these sculpted animals—quite often dogs or wolves—outline the critical ways we experience and think about the natural world.

Of the two main approaches to figurative animals, the solid steel life-size silhouettes indicate the divide between us and them, but as the viewer moves and changes perspective the ‘animal’ quickens and begins to work within our imagination.

However, when language threatens to conscript the ‘free’ spirit of that animal, McEwen often introduces other vehicles such as the canoe, boat or airplane to produce a mitigating effect. These vehicles and their given perspectives might then either replace or operate alongside the animal.

In his second, more recent approach, animals made with a skin of small laser-cut stars demonstrate a more interactive cosmos, one with a freer range and less guarded dynamic. Within these three-dimensional bodies, difference becomes a reminder that all life exists – like folds in a garment, alike through embodiment but different through lifestyle.

2025
Photograph
30 x 22 x 1.5 inches

Value: $850
Starting Bid: $425

Artist Statement

In my paintings and photographs, I explore how we internalize and experience the natural world, the interplay between surface and space, and the connections between seen and unseen.

Artist Biography

Claudia studied Literature and Art History at Queen’s University (BA Hons) and the University of Toronto (MA, BEd); and Integrated Arts, Media and Design at OCAD University (MFA). She has exhibited work in public and commercial galleries since 1984. Claudia grew up in Midland, Ontario, and lives in downtown Barrie, Ontario. She works in her home studio and on location at family cottages on Bone Island, Georgian Bay and Lake Panache, southwest of Sudbury. Her passion is expressive landscape and how it reflects the presence of place. The concept of Biophilia, positing that life has a mysterious inner dynamic, a life force of its own, is fundamental to her practice.

A recently retired educator (with appointments ranging from Kindergarten to OAC, and courses for college and university level programs) as well as a a registered art therapist (DTATI), Claudia completed her MFA thesis and an accompanying exhibition at Quest Art Gallery in Midland, Spring 2023. Her art practice is now full-time, and has expanded to include installation, poetry and prose, and photography.

2007
Oil on canvas
31 x 41 x 1.5 inches

Value: $2,400
Starting Bid: $1,200

Artist Statement

Light and water are explored as universal elements, evolving towards abstraction. Depicting reality as energy and movement, Peter invites the viewer to share this energetic meditation.

Artist Biography

Peter Miehm began his career in art and design upon his graduation from H.B. Beal Technical School, Special Art Program, London, Ontario in 1964. He worked initially as a commercial artist in London and Owen Sound and exhibited his first painting at the Tom Thomson Art Gallery in 1966. In 1971 Peter graduated from Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan, Bachelor of Science, with a major in Graphic Design and a minor in Visual Art. After marrying Lois Elliot in 1972, he worked in Vancouver, British Columbia as a self-employed designer/illustrator and was affiliated, as a painter, with the Warwick Art Gallery until 1977. Peter returned to Ontario, graduated with a Bachelor of Education, Visual Art major, from the University of Western Ontario, and began a career in teaching which culminated in the position of professor, School of Design and Visual Art, Georgian College, Barrie. Peter retired from full-time teaching status in 2008 and part-time in 2013, and currently continues to pursue his painting career.

2024
Oil on panel
8 x 10 x 2 inches

Value: $800
Starting Bid: $400

Artist Statement

I spent a period of time moving from landscape based work towards more abstracted work, pushing back and forth between the two. This piece explores the process of that transition, intuitively playing with marks and letting the agency of oil paint and unconventional tools dictate the direction with no expectation of outcome.

Artist Biography

Sue A. Miller is an Ontario born artist who splits her time between Georgian Bay and Conception Bay, NL. Her work is focused on landscape, environmental stewardship and the primal-spiritual link between humans and nature. Primarily painting with oil and wood panel, Miller’s creative practice has expanded into large multi-media installations that include three dimensional creations, sound and light. “The goal in my work is to allow space and time for the viewer to find themselves in the art”.

Miller’s work is represented by Skwirl Gallery, Bayfield ON and Christina Parker Gallery, St. John’s NL.

2024
Serigraphy on paper
Edition 10
15 x 16 inches

Value: $1,500
Starting Bid: $750

DID YOU KNOW: Caroline Monnet exhibited her work in Structural Integrity at the MacLaren Art Centre in 2024. She has three artworks in the permanent collection of Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre (RVH).

Artist Statement

Caroline Monnet uses visual and media arts to express a keen interest in communicating Indigenous identity through complex cultural narratives. Her work grapples with colonialism’s impact, updating outdated systems with anishinaabeg methodologies. Monnet has made a signature for working with industrial materials, combining the vocabulary of popular and traditional visual cultures with the tropes of modernist abstraction to create unique hybrid forms. Monnet is always in the stage of experimentation and invention, both for herself and for the work.

Artist Biography

Caroline Monnet is a multidisciplinary artist of Anishinaabe and French ancestry, originally from the Outaouais region, who lives and works in Mooniyang/Montreal. With a deep interest in communicating Indigenous identity through complex cultural narratives, her work grapples with colonialism’s impact, updating outdated systems with anishinaabeg methodologies.

Her work has been shown in solo exhibitions, notably at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (Canada), Kunsthalle Schirn (Frankfurt, Germany), Arsenal art contemporain (New York, USA), Centre International d’Art et du paysage de l’île de Vassivière (France) and the University of Toronto Art Museum (Canada). The artist has also exhibited at the Whitney Biennial (New York, USA), the Toronto Art Biennial (Canada), KØS Museum (Køge, Denmark), Musée d’art contemporain (Montréal, Canada) and the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa, Canada), among others.

With bachelor’s degrees in sociology and communications from the University of Ottawa and the University of Granada (Spain), Monnet received the Prix Pierre-Ayot and was a finalist for the Sobey Arts Award in 2020. She was also the recipient of the Merata Mita fellowship from the Sundance Institute, and was named Compagne des arts et des lettres du Québec in 2023. Her work is included in numerous collections in North America and at the Maison de l’UNESCO in Paris. Caroline Monnet is represented by Blouin Division in Montreal and Toronto.

2004
Porcelain head, bronze rose, stainless steel base
21 x 6 x 8 inches

Value: $2,800
Starting Bid: $1,400

DID YOU KNOW: Marlene Hilton Moore will have a career retrospective exhibition at the MacLaren Art Centre in 2026.

Artist Statement

Three Graces-Beauty reflects my engagement with the beauty found in abundance in nature, especially that of the female and of the flower.

Artist Biography

Marlene Hilton Moore has defined a distinctive profile in Canadian visual arts marked by outstanding achievements at local and national levels, particularly in the complex arena of public art and monuments.

Marlene has an extensive public exhibition schedule of solo and group exhibitions. Her sculptural and photographic work engages the human form, with a focus on the stereotypes that pressure women in today’s society as well as concerns regarding our human relationships as a whole.

Marlene has been a recipient of many public art commissions over the last twenty-five years. Significant works include the prestigious Valiants Memorial in Ottawa, Two Freedoms, McMurtry Gardens of Justice in Toronto, Wiidookdaadiwin in Simcoe County, The Volunteers, Halifax and Ad Astra, a monument to the 100th Anniversary of the RCAF, CFB Borden.

In 2014 Hilton Moore received the City of Barrie’s Excellence in Arts Award. In 2010 she retired from teaching at the School of Design and Visual Arts, Georgian College following a distinguished 25-year teaching career.

2024
Mixed media, acrylic
36 x 36 x 1.5 inches

Value: $900
Starting Bid: $450

Artist Statement

This abstract painting captures the spirit of an outdoor plaza inviting viewers to reflect on community, presence and the simply joy of people watching.

Artist Biography

Chris Nelson is a self-taught, intuitive mixed-media artist from Barrie, Ontario. His creative practice is rooted in curiosity, emotion, and a deep desire to experiment with the limitless possibilities of materials. Working with acrylic paint, pastels, charcoal, sand, pencils, and markers, Nelson layers his surfaces with texture and energy, creating pieces that feel both tactile and alive.

What sets his work apart is his ability to fuse raw emotion with colour, allowing his intuitive process to guide the outcome rather than confining it to rigid plans. He embraces spontaneity, letting materials interact in unexpected ways. This openness leads to dynamic works that reflect both his inner landscape and his dialogue with the world around him.

Nelson’s art often explores the relationship between human experience and natural environments. His pieces evoke movement, memory, and mood, inviting viewers to engage not just visually, but emotionally.

2024
Chromogenic photograph
30 x 30 x 1.5 inches

Value: $3,500
Starting Bid: $1,750

DID YOU KNOW: Maureen O’Connor has six photographs in the permanent collection of Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre (RVH).

Artist Statement & Biography 

Maureen O’Connor is a fine art photographer living in Toronto and is a graduate of OCAD.

Maureen is a life-long animal lover and these photographs are produced with the cooperation of local sanctuaries, many of these animals are rescues from fur farms and others are non-releasable wildlife.

The animals in these images were brought and photographed onsite to the location in the photograph, several of the locations are homes in Toronto pre-redevelopment. By photographing Canadian animals in abandoned and crumbling domestic architecture, Maureen O’Connor raises questions about how nature and the built environment intersect.

She sees these spaces as transformative, evoking memory and showing the beauty and fragility of the animals and the architecture. We are invited to cross the threshold and imagine new narratives where the natural world and the domestic world meet, and consider how this informs our identity in a country defined by both its wild landscape and its orderly cities.

2025
Oil on canvas
16 x 20 x 3.25 inches

Value: $500
Starting Bid: $250

Artist Statement

The subjects of my work often portray things or places that tell a story. Sitting along highway 11 going north, what stories could they tell? With “progress,” will it still be there in 10 years?

Artist Biography

Margaret Ann trained in oil and water colour with well-known artists over an extended period of time. She has also studied drawing in charcoal and graphite experimenting with the medium doing life studies from models. Her art hangs in private collections across Canada, the US and overseas. Along with the Bayside Artists, she has exhibited at the John B. Aird Gallery in Toronto. Her works can often be found hanging in galleries around Simcoe County. Margaret Ann belongs to the Bayside Artist group, North Simcoe Arts and The Quest Gallery.

2023
Acrylic, paper and graphite on paper
30 x 24 x 2

Value: $1,200
Starting Bid: $600

DID YOU KNOW: Jill Price exhibited From There To Here: Walking for Tomorrow at the MacLaren Art Centre in 2025, and at The Campus Gallery, Georgian College in 2022.

Artist Statement

Just one of Price’s investigations into un/making as a creative act, Botanical Monologues are a series of mixed-media collages generated from reconfiguring old works and excess paint on paper to arrive at compositions that celebrate the agency, beauty, and effect of flora on human and more-than-human bodies and the environments in which they inhabit.

Artist Biography

Founder of the UN/making Network, Dr. Jill Price is a Canadian artist, curator, and scholar whose interdisciplinary practice explores the intersections of art, ecology, and ethics. Holding a PhD in Cultural Studies from Queen’s  University, Price examines the liveliness of materials through drawing, assemblages, installation and new media. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, engaging audiences in critical dialogues around consumption, colonialism, and climate change. By tracing the origins and impacts of everyday objects, Price’s creative research makes visible the entangled relationships between human and the more-than-human worlds so as to foster ecological awareness, post-capitalism and post-colonial aesthetics, and ethical responsibility.

2024
Reclaimed yarn, hydrocal, and acrylic
14 x 36 x 36

Value: $1,800
Starting Bid: $900

DID YOU KNOW: Jill Price exhibited From There To Here: Walking for Tomorrow at the MacLaren Art Centre in 2025, and at The Campus Gallery, Georgian College in 2022.

Artist Statement

Curious about the agency and/or effect of objects, this sculpture was part of an exhibition entitled Familial Threads that celebrated the life and work of Price’s grandmother. Using three knitted blankets from her late grandmother to create a series of large meditative drawings, Price also reclaimed other yarn items to create a series of vessels that honoured different memories or characteristics of this complex, yet stoic and straightforward woman.

Artist Statement

Founder of the UN/making Network, Dr. Jill Price is a Canadian artist, curator, and scholar whose interdisciplinary practice explores the intersections of art, ecology, and ethics. Holding a PhD in Cultural Studies from Queen’s University, Price examines the liveliness of materials through drawing, assemblages, installation and new media. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, engaging audiences in critical dialogues around consumption, colonialism, and climate change. By tracing the origins and impacts of everyday objects, Price’s creative research makes visible the entangled relationships between human and the more-than-human worlds so as to foster ecological awareness, post-capitalism and post-colonial aesthetics, and ethical responsibility.

2019
Gouache on arces
15 x 19 inches

Value: $650
Starting Bid: $325

Artist Statement

My work has recently shifted from painting landscapes to looking at landscape as a vessel that posses visual questions and suggests narrative. This new work is process driven. There is minimal preliminary planning involved. Rather the paintings more or less paint themselves. The process is one of mapping place through constructing layered passages of mark-making and imaging, of revealing and concealing, of tagging objects and unveiling dialogues. The intention is to create an ambiguous, immersive environment that promotes a discussion with the viewer.

Artist Biography

Rod Prouse was born in London, England. Graduated from the Ontario College of Art in 1968 and now lives on the shores of Georgian Bay, Ontario, Canada.

2024
Oil on canvas
30 x 24 x 1 inches

Value: $6,200
Starting Bid: $3,100

DID YOU KNOW: Brian Rideout is a graduate of the Georgian College Visual Arts program and received the Premier’s Award for Excellence in the Arts (Emerging) in 2017.

Artist Statement

Brian Rideout’s paintings investigate commercial images and examine how these images interact within the history of painting and image production technology.

Artist Biography

Rideout (b. 1986) lives and works in Toronto, Ontario. He studied at Georgian College (Barrie, ON) and was the 2017 recipient of The Premier’s Awards for Excellence in the Arts (Emerging). Recent solo exhibitions have taken place at Patrick Parrish Gallery (New York), Tile Blush (Miami), MKG127 (Toronto), and the Helen and Arch Brown Center for the Visual Arts (Barrie). Recent group shows include Seojung Art (Seoul), Hunt Gallery (Toronto), MAW (NYC), Clint Roenisch Gallery (Toronto), and Mercer Union (Toronto). Rideout’s work has been featured in publications like Harper’s Bazaar, Canadian Art, ICON Design, Sight Unseen, Artspace, Artsy, It’s Nice That, and others. His work is included in the private collections of TD Bank, RBC, National Bank of Canada, and Estée Lauder.

2025
Acrylic on paper
30.5 x 22.9 centimetres

Value: $900
Starting Bid: $450

DID YOU KNOW: Scott Rogers developed Between Leaf and Light, a six-channel sound installation, on view in the main-level waiting room of the Hudson Regional Cancer Centre at Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre (RVH) from July to October 2025.

Artist Statement

Night Watch is part of an ongoing series of paintings and drawings that incorporate graphics of birds of prey. For the past ten years I have been documenting and collecting imagery from police, security companies, and neighbourhood watch organizations that use owls, falcons, and hawks in their branding. By extracting the graphics from these advertisements and placing them into ambiguous backgrounds, the works are an attempt at recuperating the birds from their carceral overtones.

Artist Biography

Scott Rogers (b. 1981, Mohkinstsis/Calgary) lives in Tkaronto, Canada. His practice negotiates the complex relationships between humans, other living beings, and land. He has a MFA from the Glasgow School of Art and also studied at the Staedelschule in Frankfurt (DE). Notable recent projects include Afternoon Projects (Vancouver, 2025), Two Seven Two Gallery (Toronto, 2025), Ormston House (Limerick, IR, 2025), ATLAS Arts (Skye, UK, 2023-2025), Pink Snow (Berlin, DE, 2024), Nuit Blanche (Toronto, 2023), Koraï Project Space (Nicosia, CY, 2022), Kunstverein München (DE, 2021), Ivory Tars (Glasgow, UK, 2021), the Kamias Triennial (Manila, PH, 2020), and Franz Kaka (Toronto, 2018). In 2017 Rogers co-edited “Recognition”, the 14th issue of the journal FR DAVID, in collaboration with Will Holder and published by KW Institute for Contemporary Art (Berlin, DE). Scott’s sound installation Songs to the Sun was recently acquired for the Circulating Public Art Collection of Markham (CA). In 2025 he developed Between Leaf & Light, a new multichannel audio work for the Cancer Program at Barrie Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre. He will produce a new outdoor public artwork for the Robert McLaughlin Gallery (Oshawa, 2025) this autumn.

2012, ongoing
Custom embroidery on found vintage textiles
28 x 17 inches

Value: $500
Starting Bid: $250

DID YOU KNOW: Jon Sasaki exhibited Homage at the MacLaren Art Centre in 2025.

Artist Statement

In an ongoing series, obsolete calendar towels have been embroidered with the date of an identical, future calendar year, imbuing an outdated object with renewed “ahead of its time” relevance.

Artist Biography

Jon Sasaki is a multidisciplinary artist based in Toronto/Tkaronto with a longstanding interest in the questions surrounding Canada’s landscape tradition, probing the ways the genre dovetails with broader questions around our national identity, for better or worse.

Sasaki’s work has been exhibited across Canada, at institutions including The McMichael Canadian Art Collection (Kleinburg, Ontario), which oversaw an eight-venue touring show (Homage, 2020–present); The National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa); The Art Gallery of Ontario, The Esker Foundation (Calgary); and The Rooms (St. John’s, Nfld.).

International venues have included The Canadian Embassy in Japan (Tokyo) and the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Seoul, South Korea. He has completed public art commissions, both collaboratively and independently, for the City of Barrie, Ontario; the City of Mississauga; Toronto’s Waterfront; Sheridan College; and the Toronto Transit Commission.

Jon has presented durational performance projects at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, the LIVE Performance Art Biennale (Vancouver); Toronto’s Nuit Blanche, Edmonton’s Nuit Blanche, and The Toronto Dance Theatre. Sasaki holds a BFA from Mount Allison University, and is represented by Clint Roenisch Gallery in Toronto. He frequently visits Simcoe County, where he has long family roots.

2025
Oil on canvas
24 x 20 x 2 inches

Value: $600
Starting Bid: $300

Artist Statement

Scott attempts to reflect his current experiences through a completely improvised openness to process, and to balance many opposite themes and genres within his work.

Artist Biography

Scott Sawtell has been exhibiting his paintings for two and a half decades. In addition to making his paintings in his suburban studio just outside Toronto, Scott used to work diligently at teaching other like-minded individuals to create their own unique artwork at Georgian College in Barrie, Ontario, OCAD University in Toronto, Ontario, and Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario.

Often called a “good egg” by others, Scott is helping raise two young boys to also be “good eggs” themselves. Scott has an M.F.A from the University of Waterloo (2002) and is a graduate of the Ontario College of Art and Design (2000). As well as maintaining a vital artistic career showing work across Canada and the United States, Scott has previously curated exhibitions for The Town of Newmarket, the City of Kitchener, Oakville Galleries and Humber College.

The largest exhibition he facilitated was 60 Painters, an overview of contemporary Canadian Painting. Scott is currently concentrating on his own painting practice.

2019
Acrylic and mixed media on canvas
30 x 40 x 2 inches

Value: $3,000
Starting Bid: $1,500

DID YOU KNOW: Vicky Talwar exhibited A Shift in Consciousness at the MacLaren Art Centre in 2025.

Artist Statement

Her practice explores hybridity through colour, materiality, and spiritual motifs, articulating themes of memory, identity, and movement grounded in her South-Asian Canadian heritage and meditative creative process.

Artist Biography

Vicky Talwar is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice encompasses painting, mixed media, performance, and installation. Drawing upon her personal experience as a Hindu Canadian, Talwar explores themes of identity, cultural hybridity, and the connections between the physical and spiritual.

She holds a BFA and MFA in Art, Media & Design from OCAD University, as well as a Bachelor of Education from York University. Alongside her artistic practice, Talwar works as an educator with the York Region District School Board.

Talwar has exhibited her work nationally and internationally, with presentations in Toronto, Canmore, Los Angeles, New York, the United Kingdom, and more. While completing her MFA at OCADU, she presented her solo thesis exhibition, Inward Identities, at Latcham Art Centre. She has had solo exhibitions at Aurora Cultural Centre, Station Gallery, Capital One Office in Toronto (programmed by Demetriou Art Group), and Robert Langen Gallery in Waterloo, Ontario. In 2017, she was awarded the Juror’s Award for the Annual Juried Exhibition at Latcham Art Centre.

She is currently presenting her solo exhibition A Shift in Consciousness at the MacLaren Art Centre in Barrie, Ontario. Talwar’s work has also been recognized through acquisitions, including a painting selected for international display by Global Affairs Canada and another for the permanent collection of Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre (RVH) in Barrie. Her work also resides in the Capital One Office collection in Toronto.

2014
Acrylic on paper
16.25 x 22 x 1.5 inches

Value: $1,500
Starting Bid: $750

DID YOU KNOW: Monica Tap has one painting in the permanent collection of Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre (RVH).

Artist Statement

A Thousand Sides (study) is part of a series inspired by the moorland region of Teufelsmoor in northern Germany, home to the early 20th-century Worpswede Artist Colony. During two research trips there in 2013 and 2014, supported by the Ontario Arts Council, I explored the landscapes that shaped artists such as Paula Modersohn-Becker and Rainer Maria Rilke. This study reflects my ongoing interest in how these utopian artist communities connected landscape and imagination—a lineage that continues to inform the history of painting in Canada.

Artist Biography

Monica Tap (b. 1962, Edmonton, Canada) is a painter known for her conceptual and systematic approach to decoding pictorial illusionism and perception. She has exhibited widely across Canada, the United States, and Europe, and her work is held in many public and corporate collections including Canada House (London, UK) and the Würth Collection (Germany). Tap earned her BFA and MFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and is Professor Emerita at the University of Guelph. She is represented by MKG127 (Toronto) and Peter Robertson Gallery, Edmonton, and lives and works in Toronto.

1997
Pastel on paper
28 x 36.5 x 1

Value: $1,900
Starting Bid: $950

DID YOU KNOW: Frances Thomas is a visual artist and Curator of ART@RVH (Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre). Her work was featured in Ron Shuebrook and Frances Thomas: In Conversation exhibited at the MacLaren Art Centre in 2024.

Artist Statement

This pastel on paper was done en plein air during a period when I was spending a lot of time in the landscape. The movement and lack of fixedness in this work are enduring aspects of my ongoing interests. In the process of merging intuition, spontaneity and structure, I create abstracted architectures pointing to something connected to day-to-day life and experience.

Artist Biography

Frances Thomas, a contemporary Canadian painter and printmaker, was born in Parry Sound, Ontario. She received both her BFA and MFA from York University, Toronto, Ontario, and is the recipient of the Samuel Sarick Purchase Award for excellence in thesis work. She has participated in residencies in Pouch Cove, Newfoundland and Triangle Arts in Brooklyn, New York and in 2016 spent three months in Berlin on a self-directed residency. Her paintings are currently featured in a travelling exhibition, “Ron Shuebrook and Frances Thomas: In Conversation” with stops in four public galleries and with an accompanying catalogue. Thomas currently lives and has her studio in Barrie. She has exhibited in Barrie, Montreal, Edmonton, Toronto, Woodstock and New York and her work is in the permanent collections of the MacLaren Art Centre, Bank of Montreal, York University and Woodstock Art Gallery. Thomas is represented by Peter Robertson Gallery in Edmonton, Alberta.

2020
Acrylic (framed)
11.25 x 9.25 x 1.5 inches

Value: $850
Starting Bid: $425

Artist Statement

I strive to express myself in a variety of ways. Influenced by the environment around me, I work on canvas or paper, using the tools at hand or local detritus.

Artist Biography

I was born and raised in Toronto, graduating from OCAD with first class honours. Worked as a freelance designer of wallcoverings, rugs, textiles also for a New York City merchandise company.

I now reside in Innisfil, ON, and continue to pursue painting, assemblages (detritus) and sculpture. I am one of the founding members of Simcoe Watershed Art Project and Innisfil Arts, Culture and Heritage Council (IACHC), previously on the board of ‘Surfacing’ Printers and Dyers Assoc. in Toronto.

I have shown and curated many exhibitions in Simcoe, York counties, and Toronto, including the AGO (100 Years of the Ontario College of Art and Design), and also in Victoria, BC and presently with the Human Rights Bard in Italy.

My paintings and assemblages are a fundamental reflection of my physical environment with forest and water close by. Colour and emotion is evoked by interactions with local research of those environs. I am always interested in the visual, tactile, colour, iconography, pattern elements and atmospheric changes found in nature, textiles, architecture and in places I have lived and visited
(Dubai and Carden Alvar in Ontario). The fact that I live next to a major wetlands exposes me to all elements.

My work is owned by a large diversity of people in Canada, Britain, China, Italy and Japan.

2007
Oil on canvas
47.5 x 47.5 inches

Value: $2,500
Starting Bid: $1,250

Artist Statement

My paintings are landscape based, often including figures or other signs of human encounter with places in nature. In the painting Boat/People/Green Sea, these people are waiting to transfer to a gondola for a Blue Grotto tour in Capri. At the same time this little boat seems to represent a boat load of Mediterranean asylum seekers.

Artist Biography

Regina is an honours graduate of Georgian College, receiving a three-year Diploma of Fine Arts. In 2001, Williams was the winner of the RBC Private Counsel Award for Central Canada and in 2012 participated in a one-month residency at Foundation Valpariso in Spain. Williams has exhibited extensively in solo and group exhibitions. Collections include the MacLaren Art Centre, RBC Private Counsel, Scotia McLeod Inc, Barrie and private collections in Canada and the United States. Williams is represented by Roberts Gallery in Toronto.

2024
Watercolour on paper
7 x 10 inches

Value: $395
Starting Bid: $200

Artist Statement

The Utopia Conservation Area, just west of Barrie, is known for its historic grist mill, nature trails, wetlands, and abundant biodiversity. It is a lush and serene landscape.

Artist Biography

Wendy Wingfelder is an artist who is interested in observing and exploring the natural world and working with memory. Her love of the outdoors often leads her to plein air painting, in watercolour or oil, where she strives to portray the feeling of a place and time through the fleeting interplay of light and colour. Wendy paints from both her home studio in Barrie and family cottage in Honey Harbour, Georgian Bay. She finds inspiration in everyday life and her deep connection to landscapes she has known for decades and shared with generations of her family. She also appreciates travelling to unfamiliar places to paint and learn about the history.

Wendy graduated in 1986 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Illustration and Painting from Syracuse University. She began her career working as a freelance illustrator before transitioning to painting private commissions, helping people preserve memories of their life story. Over her decades-long practice she has participated in numerous exhibitions as well as auctions for the MacLaren Art Centre and the Georgian Bay Land Trust, and her work is held in many private collections.

2024
Mixed media on paper
22 x 18 x 1 inches

Value: $1,600
Starting Bid: $800

DID YOU KNOW: Z’otz* Collective exhibited An Alternative to Simplicity, at The Campus Gallery, Georgian College, in 2025.

Artist Statement

The work of Z’otz* Collective is an invitation into a world where boundaries dissolve: between artists, between mediums, and between the imagined and real. Collaboration is both the process and the message.

Artist Biography

Z’otz* Collective is comprised of Nahúm Flores (Honduras), Erik Jerezano (Mexico), and Ilyana Martínez (Mexico/Canada). Since 2004, they have collaborated on drawings, sculptures, site–specific installations, and animation. They have attended residencies in Croatia and Serbia, where they initiated work with ceramic sculpture.

The Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art invited the group to participate in a residency to produce work for a solo exhibition in 2022. Their ceramic sculptures are in the permanent collection of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.

In conjunction with Art Windsor-Essex, the Collective led drawing workshops with migrant agricultural workers, in Leamington, Ontario. They have received grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council.

Z’otz* Collective has created over 45 in-situ ephemeral drawing installations. They have had over 30 solo exhibitions and over 40 group exhibitions in museums, galleries and artist-run centres in Canada, Mexico, USA, Serbia, and China.