Category: News

Winner’s work showcased at the Joe Plaskett Foundation Booth during Art Toronto (Oct. 26-29, 2023)

Painter Chantal Khoury is the 2023 recipient of the $65,000 Joseph Plaskett postgraduate award in painting. Born in New Brunswick to Lebanese settlers, she recently completed her Master of Fine Arts at the University of Guelph. In her work, Khoury explores cultural loss and presence in a postcolonial condition while questioning the meaning of the mark in abstract painting. Drawing inspiration from a diversity of scholars and artists from the Global South, she uses traditional painting techniques to address the diaspora through a contemporary methodology, leveraging paint’s versatility through the lens of abstraction.

The jury found the depiction of light in Khoury’s paintings visually striking and beautiful, and they were captivated by the fluidity and variety of painting techniques. They appreciated the careful balancing act between the apparent simplicity of the compositions and the complex hints of representation, with traces of obliterated figures emerging from the works.

The award will allow Khoury to spend one year abroad, which she plans to divide equally across London, Paris, and Lebanon. During this period of great freedom, she plans to not only study great works and explore collections of cultural artifacts. She is also eager to reconnect with her family’s heritage by visiting culturally and historically relevant places in Lebanon, as well as get involved in community and scholarly pursuits pertinent to her work: “I’m also eager to engage with other Arab diasporas who hold community-oriented workshops […]”. In London, she plans to meet with her former MFA external committee member, artist, and writer, Mandy Merzaban, to continue their exchange from a decolonial perspective.

Khoury’s work is currently showing in Toronto (group exhibition at Hunt Gallery, Sept. 8 – Oct. 7), in Montreal (at Le Livart as part of Pictura Festival, Sept. 14 – Oct. 27), in Los Angeles (solo exhibition at Nicodim Gallery, Sept. 16 – Oct. 28), and in New York (forthcoming group exhibition at Nicodim New York, Oct 19 – Nov. 18). Her work will also be present at Art Toronto (Oct. 26-29) in the Joe Plaskett Foundation Booth (#A03) and the TAP Art Space Booth (#B72).

The Plaskett Award recipient was chosen by a pan-Canadian jury who met virtually in June 2023 to carefully assess the 32 exceptional applications that were received. In an effort to accurately represent the variety of viewpoints in Canadian painting, the jury members came from different regions: Jordan Bennett, a Mi’kmaw visual artist currently based in Halifax, Nova Scotia; Meera Sethi, a contemporary Canadian visual artist established in Toronto, Ontario; and M.E. Sparks, an artist and educator currently living in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

As the Joseph Plaskett Award transitions to a biennial schedule, the next call for applications is set to open in February 2025. Canadian artist Joseph Plaskett, who wished to give young Canadian painters the opportunity to discover Europe, created the Joe Plaskett Foundation in 2004. The award recipients are exceptional emerging Canadian artists in the field of painting who are admitted in a graduate program.

For more information:
info@joeplaskett.com

$10,000 Nancy Petry Award won by Michelle Peraza

Painter Shoora Majedian is the 2022 recipient of the $30,000 Joseph Plaskett postgraduate award in painting. Originally from Tehran, Iran, she completed her Master of Fine Arts at Emily Carr University of Art + Design in 2021. In her works, Majedian examines personal and social memories influenced by her childhood in Iran and her embodied experiences pre and post-migration. She builds storytelling through painting, and investigates socio-political issues through visual language.

The award will allow her to spend six months in Europe, where she plans to divide her time between Germany, London, Paris and Amsterdam. This period of great freedom will allow her to explore new ideas: “Expanding the visual narrative with symbolic elements, different ground sizes, and incorporating photographs as references, are what I would like to push further. Visiting some of the great museums will allow me to explore formal and historical figure depiction boundaries. I am particularly interested in German painters, both contemporary ones and those associated with German Neo-Objectivity and Expressionism, but I am also inspired by the great female painters who refer to mythological strategies and the use of real-life models.”The jury was impressed by Majedian’s ability to capture the zeitgeist in works that feel simultaneously loose, alive, and beautifully painted. Every painting appears to be telling its own story, through the expressiveness and emotion of the human figures rendered therein. The singular colour palette and original compositional strategies make the works all the more intriguing.

The 2022 Nancy Petry Award was won by Canadian painter Michelle Peraza, who completed a Master of Fine Arts at York University in Ontario in 2022. Of Cuban and Costa Rican descent, Peraza explores LatinX identity through photorealistic larger-than-life portraits of individuals close to her, people who are often unseen in the history of the painted portrait. Her deft use of painterly codes allows her to deconstruct colonial history and contribute to develop a more nuanced LatinX identity. The $10,000 award will allow her to spend two months in Spain, where she will research pre-colonial and colonial Latin American art as well as Spanish Baroque painting. The jury appreciated the powerful and focused qualities of the paintings, which work with and against signifiers of beauty and the female form, all while tackling colonial and identity issues.

Brand new works from both artists will be showcased from October 27^th to October 30^th at Art Toronto 2022, at booth P1 (Joe Plaskett Foundation). The artists will be in attendance on the opening night (Thursday, October 27) and throughout the art fair.

The award recipients were chosen after a careful assessment of the 30 exceptional applications that were received. The jury met virtually in June 2022. In an effort to accurately represent the variety of viewpoints in Canadian painting, the jury members came from different regions: David Blatherwick, retired painting professor based in Quebec; Kym Greeley, visual artist based in St. John’s, Newfoundland & Labrador; Charlene Vickers, multidisciplinary artist and art educator based in Vancouver, British Columbia.The call for applications will open in February 2023 for the next set of Plaskett and Petry Awards. Canadian artist Joseph Plaskett, who wished to give young Canadian painters the opportunity to discover Europe, created the Joe Plaskett Foundation in 2004. Since 2015, the Nancy Petry Foundation has partnered with the Joe Plaskett Foundation to administer a second prize given to the first runner-up. The award recipients are exceptional emerging Canadian artists in the field of painting who are admitted in a graduate program.

For more information:
info@joeplaskett.com

$10,000 Nancy Petry Award won by Ella Gonzales

Painter Emmanuel Osahor is the 2021 recipient of the $30,000 Joseph Plaskett postgraduate award in painting. Originally from Lagos, Nigeria, he is currently completing a Master of Fine Arts degree in painting at the University of Guelph in Ontario. The award will allow him to spend six months in Europe when public health guidelines permit international travel again.

During his time in Europe, Osahor plans to undertake a self-directed residency in London, England, and develop a new body of paintings based on the study of principles of English garden design. He is interested in the legacy of colonization that can manifest through the history of garden design: “I will collect source material through photography and outdoor painting at public gardens and conservatories. Studying English garden history might provide a way to address the similar histories present in my birth country – Nigeria, and my current country of residence – Canada, both Commonwealth countries.” While in Europe, Osahor wishes to participate in artist residencies and to visit museums to engage with English romantic landscape painting and with the works of Black painters practising in the diaspora, who have been an inspiration to his own practice.

The jury unanimously appreciated Osahor’s high-quality, attractive paintings. They enjoyed their ambitious scale and the permission for pleasure that emerges from Osahor’s use of collage and drawing to alter the composition, and from his experimentation with materiality through techniques such as scraping. The jury also recognized the political subtext of his subject matter, and expect his involvement with Black diaspora artists in Europe to further enrich his work.

The 2021 Nancy Petry Award was won by Filipina-Canadian painter Ella Gonzales who is currently completing a Master of Fine Arts degree in painting at the University of Guelph in Ontario. Her paintings and installations are inspired by narratives of migration that inform the Filipino Diaspora.  She references the many homes she lived in, using family photos and videos as the basis on which she creates digital drawings with Sketch-Up modelling software. The $10,000 award will allow her to travel for two months to Europe, where she plans to spend most of her time in Berlin researching about Bauhaus School of Design principles. The jury appreciated Ella Gonzales’s subtle and accomplished painted works, her skilful use of colour, and her ability to draw influences from the history of painting and make them her own.

The award recipients were chosen after a careful assessment of the 34 exceptional applications that were received. The jury met virtually in June 2021. In an effort to accurately represent the variety of viewpoints in Canadian painting, the jury members came from different regions: David Garneau, Professor of Visual Arts, University of Regina, Saskatchewan; Beth Stuart, Assistant Professor of Visual Arts, University of Victoria, Vancouver; Jinny Yu, Professor of Visual Arts, University of Ottawa, Ottawa.

The call for applications will open in February 2022 for the next set of Plaskett and Petry Awards. Canadian artist Joseph Plaskett, who wished to give young Canadian painters the opportunity to discover Europe, created the Joe Plaskett Foundation in 2004. Since 2015, the Nancy Petry Foundation has partnered with the Joe Plaskett Foundation to administer a second prize given to the first runner-up. The award recipients are exceptional emerging Canadian artists in the field of painting who are admitted in a graduate program.

For more information:
info@joeplaskett.com

$10,000 Nancy Petry Award won by James Gardner

Painter Azadeh Elmizadeh is the 2020 recipient of the $30,000 Joseph Plaskett postgraduate award in painting. Originally from Tehran in Iran, she is a recent graduate of the Master of Fine Arts degree in painting at the University of Guelph in Ontario. The award will allow her to spend six months in Europe when public health guidelines permit international travel again.

This period of great freedom will give Elmizadeh the opportunity to develop her art practice in a stimulating environment: “The Plaskett Award provides the opportunity to extend my understanding of the role that intercultural encounters have played in shaping Modernist abstraction through the 20th century”, says the artist. “During my stay in Europe, I hope that I will be able to engage and contribute to the contemporary dialogues that are being generated by the growing diversity in Europe’s cultural landscape. I intend to base my studio practice in Berlin where I will have access to the significant collection of Persian manuscripts at the Islamic art museum in Germany. I also hope to travel and will continue to explore my research interests with visits to the Bibliothèque Nationale de France and the Victoria and Albert Museum in England.”

From the onset, the jury was captivated by Elmizadeh’s masterful approach to constructing a painting that evokes luminosity through simplicity. In her works, they found a great balance between a sense of history, with a nod to colour field paintings, and a desire to bring something fresh and new, thanks to an incredibly complex colour palette that evaporates in fire and light, as well as hints of figures emerging from the painting surface.

The 2020 Nancy Petry Award was won by painter James Gardner, who is originally from Kitchener in Ontario and who just completed his MFA in Painting and Drawing at Concordia University. The $10,000 award will allow him to travel to Europe for two months, where he plans to stay in Greece, Italy and Ireland to continue his study of paintings made within the tradition of the Art of Memory and further develop his ideas about the intersection between “Western esotericism” and image making. The jury was impressed by Gardner’s strong knowledge of painting norms and conventions, along with his willingness to explore them with playful, complex constructions.

The award recipients were chosen after a careful assessment of the 34 exceptional applications that were received. The jury met virtually in November 2020. For the first time this year, the jury members came from different regions, in an effort to accurately represent the variety of viewpoints in Canadian painting:Gwenessa Lam, associate professor, Emily Carr University of Art and Design, Vancouver; Sara Hartland-Rowe, part-time instructor, Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Halifax; Stéphane La Rue, painter, Montreal. The call for applications opens in February 2021 for the next set of Plaskett and Petry Awards.

Canadian artist Joseph Plaskett, who wished to give young Canadian painters the opportunity to discover Europe, created the Joe Plaskett Foundation in 2004. Since 2015, the Nancy Petry Foundation has partnered with the Joe Plaskett Foundation to administer a second prize given to the first runner-up. The award recipients are exceptional emerging Canadian artists in the field of painting who are admitted in a graduate program.

For more information: 
info@joeplaskett.com

$10,000 Nancy Petry Award won by Lauren Pelc-McArthur

Painter Caroline Mousseau is the 2019 recipient of the $30,000 Joseph Plaskett postgraduate award in painting. Originally from Winnipeg, she is currently pursuing a Master of Fine Arts degree in painting at the University of Guelph in Ontario. The award will allow her to spend six months in Europe upon completing her graduate studies.

This period of great freedom will allow Mousseau to focus on her artistic practice and to discover the masterpieces to be found in European museums: “I will base my work in Berlin and take advantage of short travels to the Netherlands, Norway, and Denmark, to further examine the contemporary relevance of craft in art,” says the artist. “I am especially interested in seeing design or folk art next to original modernist works such as those of the Bauhaus and De Stijl.”

The jury was impressed by the artist’s technical mastery and by her clever deconstruction of the abstract expressionist brushstroke through slow, deliberate gestures. Her remarkable understanding of conceptual issues in painting allows her to confidently deal with the tropes of abstraction.

The 2019 Nancy Petry Award was won by painter Lauren Pelc-McArthur, who is originally from Toronto and is currently pursuing a Painting and Drawing Master of Fine Arts at Concordia University. The $10,000 award will allow her to travel to Europe for two months, where she plans to stay in Leipzig in Germany, as well as explore museums in Russia and in Italy, and to visit the CERN laboratory in Switzerland. The jury greatly appreciated the complexity of her paintings, which combine multiple techniques to create visually mutable surfaces that evoke the instability of the digital.

The award recipients were chosen after a careful assessment of the 30 exceptional applications that were received. The jury met in April 2019 at the University of Guelph, and was composed of: Doug Kirton, Associate Professor, Department of Fine Arts, University of Waterloo; Frances Loeffler, Curator, Oakville Galleries, Toronto; and Monica Tap (jury chair), Professor, School of Fine Art and Music, University of Guelph. To avoid any conflict of interest, Ms. Tap abstained from voting and discussing Caroline Mousseau’s work. Every year, the jury is held in a different location across Canada. The call for applications will open in February 2020 for the next set of Plaskett and Petry Awards.

Canadian artist Joseph Plaskett, who wished to give young Canadian painters the opportunity to discover Europe, created the Joe Plaskett Foundation in 2004. Since 2015, the Nancy Petry Foundation has partnered with the Joe Plaskett Foundation to administer a second prize given to the first runner-up. The award recipients are exceptional emerging Canadian artists in the field of painting who are admitted in a graduate program.