Over the past twenty years, the Joseph Plaskett and the Nancy Petry Foundations have supported emerging Canadian painters by giving them the opportunity to live, create artwork and/or travel overseas. To see the variety of projects, residencies and experiences that were made possible with these awards, please take a look at the testimonials below.
A big thank you to the award recipients for sharing these inspiring photos and words with us!
Michelle Peraza – 2022 Petry Award Recipient
I am incredibly honoured and humbled to have joined the list of incredible painters who have won the Nancy Petry Award. I am eternally grateful to Nancy Petry and the Petry and Plaskett Foundations for their support and the opportunity I had to live, research, and paint in Spain. It has been transformative in ways I am only beginning to unpack.
Photo credit: Michelle Peraza
Spending most of my time in Madrid, I was also able to travel to Bilbao, Burgos, Zaragoza, Teruel, Valencia, Barcelona, and Sevilla. Beginning my journey at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, I went on to visit countless other museums, basilicas, and cathedrals, and most importantly for my research, visited the Prado Museum several times.
As a Canadian LatinX visual artist exploring the complexity of the contemporary LatinX experience and the role of painting itself in promulgating colonial ideas, my trip to Spain was incredibly fruitful.
I was not only able to study Spain’s Golden Age of painting in situ while engaging in critically thinking of the transplantation of Spanish Baroque painting into Latin American art, but also paint and process what it means to be creating in Madrid as the daughter of Latin American immigrants to Canada.
My experience abroad has had a huge impact on my growth as an artist in terms of my critical/creative engagement with the legacy of oil painting, but also in terms of continuing to work towards a decolonial praxis. My sincerest gratitude to the wonderful members of the Plaskett Foundation for their support. The many moments I experienced during this opportunity will continue to reverberate along my journey as an artist.
James Gardner – 2020 Petry Award Recipient
The Petry Prize was a huge opportunity for me as I completed my MFA at Concordia University. My thesis work revolved around ideas tied to Western Esotericism, and I had been especially interested in ideas of “image agency” as tied to the history of the Ars Memoriae or the “Art of Memory”. Scholars can trace the origins of this traditions to ancient Greece and argue the Art of Memory had a profound effect on image making traditions during the medieval period up until the Renaissance, with profound developments occurring within Monastic cultures. The Petry prize afforded me the rare opportunity to visit Greece and Turkey to explore these themes; ideas that had only previously been available to me through online and textual sources.
Photo credit: James Gardner
In the summer of 2023 (the trip was deferred due to Covid), I was able to visit museums and monastic sites such as Mount Athos, the Byzantine and Christian Museum, the Hagia Sophia, and the Keslik Monastery (to name but a few) to research the ways that the Art of Memory was used and explore how these traditions might still be at work in contemporary image making traditions.
First photograph (left): studios at Mount Athos and Athens;
Second photograph (right): select Icons from the collections at The Byzantine and Christian Museum (Athens, Greece) and the Museum of Byzantine Culture (Thessaloniki, Greece).
Photo credit: James Gardner
I was incredibly lucky to not only see artifacts in museums that I had been referred to in my thesis work, but also to meet present day iconographers who are still working under the weight of this long tradition of mnemonics, veneration, memory, and image making.
It was an incredibly fruitful research trip that has helped me build new international connections as well as expand my research to bring about new ideas and exciting new directions. Research completed during this period was instrumental in creating multiple exhibitions, including my solo show, Ecstatic Distance, at Montreal’s Darling Foundry (April 28th-May 26th, 2024). I am incredibly indebted to the support of the Petry Foundation for this opportunity and the profound effect it has had on myself and my painting practice.
Exhibition views of Ecstatic Distance at Montreal’s Darling Foundry
Photo credit: Guy L’Heureux
Caroline Mousseau – 2019 Plaskett Award Recipient
In 2019, I was stunned and deeply honoured to be the recipient of the Plaskett Award. My excitement grew daily as I started planning my travels to Europe to focus on its multiple histories criss-crossing gesture, craft and formalist abstraction in painting. As I approached the last weeks of my graduate studies at the University of Guelph in 2020, the pandemic shut down much of the world.
In the thick of uncertainty, the Plaskett Award gifted me with time — time to trust in my research and studio process despite surrounding tumult; and to devote myself to necessary moves which have nurtured experimentation and a reinvigorated kinship with painting.
The Award, and the unwavering support of its team, allowed me to work with a symbiotic slowness — one that continues to impact my primary conceptual concerns and approaches in recent paintings. Although my experience as a recipient of the Plaskett Award differed from those of others, its energy continues without fail.
Exhibition views of Wrestling with Static exhibition at Winnipeg’s aceartinc.
Courtesy of the Artist. Photos: Sarah Fuller
Thank you to the Joseph Plaskett Foundation, its tireless representatives, and the many past recipients who have supported and grown this network of wonderful artists. I am forever grateful.
Adam Alexander Gunn – 2018 Petry Award Recipient
and I hamming it up in a photobooth
in Berlin sometime in February 2019.
The Nancy Petry prize was a life and career changing experience for me. With the prize money, I undertook a five-month residency in Berlin at Art Mur’s Berlin gallery in the winter/spring of 2019. My MFA work was based on an idea of working improvisationally and this made my practice sensitive to my environment, the art I encountered and the feedback from people I met.
Being based in Europe, I was able to visit in-person many of the historical paintings I had only seen in images before. This combined with the immersion into a new place with new people had a strong effect on my practice which led to a new body of paintings on the theme of colour and climate change, produced and exhibited in Berlin. After returning I continued working in this new direction with the support of a Canada Council for the Arts Grant.
at Art Mur (September 2019)
Beyond the experience this award allowed for, there was also the acknowledgement of the commitment I’d made to a painting practice which was a great source of encouragement.
I want to thank Nancy Petry and the people working to organize this award for this generous, unique, valuable and motivating experience.
Jason Stovall – 2017 Plaskett Award Recipient
The Plaskett Award and the opportunity to live, travel, and make art in Europe has been one of the most exciting and rewarding experiences of my life. I am eternally grateful to Joseph Plaskett and The Joe Plaskett Foundation for I would not have been able to travel Europe, experiencing many new things, without the award. Berlin was an amazing place to live, travel, and create out of.
Affordable living and travel are some of the benefits of living in Europe, and they make seeing different countries easy.
painting at The Scottish National Gallery,
Edinburgh
There is so much to do and see at the many galleries, museums, restaurants, and historic sights throughout Europe. I visited twelve countries in total and countless museums and galleries in each city, including Venice for the Biennale. Europe has much to offer young artists; the history and culture is so unlike North America. Being exposed to new philosophies was enlightening and I wish I could have experienced such things earlier in my life and development.
I will never forget the first time I walked through Museum Island in Berlin. I had a visceral reaction seeing buildings still scarred with bullet holes from WWII. I felt so fortunate to live in a place so far from the horrors of war. I experienced waves of occhiolism walking through cities hundreds, even thousands, of years older than any city in Canada. The things I witnessed expanded my breadth as an artist and human. I experienced a type of learning unlike anything I have known before, not from a textbook but firsthand.
My experience was unforgettable. My time abroad has contributed to my growth as an artist and person. I hope to honour Mr. Plaskett’s legacy by paying-it-forward, one day.
M. E. Sparks – 2016 Petry Award Recipient
It is an incredible honour to receive the Petry Award. I would like to extend my deepest gratitude to the the Nancy Petry Foundation, the Joe Plaskett Foundation, the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, and, of course, to the celebrated Canadian painter, photographer, performer, film and media artist, Nancy Petry, for making this opportunity possible. Thank you as well to Emily Carr University and to the dedicated professors who have provided never-ending support during my master’s. I am also forever thankful to NSCAD University and the professors there who guided me through my undergraduate degree. NSCAD is where I fell in love with painting. While understanding that the path of a painter may be a difficult one, it became evident that this is the path I was meant to be on.
To develop your own voice through painting, to remain authentic, critical, reflexive, while pushing boundaries and breaking new ground, all while putting your work out into the world – these are the challenges we face.
It is awarded opportunities such as this that remind us our voices are being heard, our work is being recognized, and to continue following this path we are on, even while it leads into the unknown.
This award demonstrates the utmost importance of travel and exploration for emerging artists. It is a rare and life-changing opportunity to have the financial assistance to travel to Europe, and I am confident this experience will significantly transform and propel my practice forward in new and unforeseen ways. To see art in person, both historical and contemporary, is crucial to every artist’s development. Engaging with international art communities, building networks through residencies and galleries, and having the chance to produce work in a new context – these opportunities are pivotal, and I am so thankful and excited for the adventure to come. Thank you again, to Nancy Petry, for her ongoing contributions to Canadian visual arts, and for continuing to make difference in the lives of emerging painters.
Stanzie Tooth – 2015 Plaskett Award Recipient
As the 2015 Recipient of the Joseph Plaskett Award, Stanzie Tooth completed residencies in four European countries: Seydisfjordur (Iceland), Florence (Italy), Athens (Greece) and Berlin (Germany).
Photographs courtesy of the artist
During her residency in Berlin, Stanzie Tooth produced a two-person exhibition with Jessica Groome (2011 Plaskett Award Recipient), who relocated to Berlin. That exhibition, called “The blue form folds in two“, was a collaborative installation and a site-specific response to studio at Institut für Alles Mögliche: Kanzlei.
Stanzie also produced “The Distance of the Moon“, a solo exhibition for General Hardware Contemporary in 2017, which was comprised of the work she made during her Plaskett year and had to do with the idea of displacement and travel.
Julie Trudel – 2013 Recipient
I am especially happy to receive the Plaskett Award in painting. First, because it’s a painting prize. I am convinced that painting, especially abstract painting, is a very relevant medium to investigate some aspects of the world we live in. The practice of painting requires long lasting patience, attention, and a willingness to stay away from clichéd images. In many aspects this is extremely different from the way things go today.
Standing in front of a painting is a special experience: we are looking at an image, yet we are looking at a handmade object. Another human being has tried to communicate some idea through it. We should walk toward the painting and be open to engage with it, with our senses and our mind. It is something I love.
Winning the Plaskett Award will give me the opportunity to spend a full year in Berlin doing those things I love: to go to the studio every day to paint, discover the work of other artists and meet with very committed artists. This is an amazing gift.
That’s why I would like to thank the Joe Plaskett Foundation and the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, and especially the members of this year’s jury: senior artists Ben Reeves, Renée Van Halm and Robert Youds. I am the 10th emerging artist to receive the award and I am proud to join a list of serious painters. I also warmly thank Landon Mackenzie who coordinates the award with a great generosity, giving time as well as generous advice without counting.
Finally, I would like to say how important taking my MFA at the Université du Québec à Montréal was in the development of my young painting practice. I found there excellent teachers, conceptual rigour and a spirit of collaboration and generosity among the students.
Nam Nguyen – 2008 Plaskett Award Recipient
John Vogel (Joe Plaskett Foundation) once asked if the award had the transformational effect Joseph had hoped for.
I would have to say…already I am a different person, a different artist, and more confident about my point of view as an artist after being expose to so much…to the point of over stimulation. And it’s not even over yet! My work has changed and I think that a huge part of it has not only been being able to learn from seeing art, but having time to think and just make things without the pressure of “real” life. So yeah! I think the Plaskett formula for transformation is a resounding success!
I found that the award could be more accurately described as a post-graduate independent research residency, similar to any post-graduate or post-doctoral research of other disciplines. In the time I have spent here, I have visited fifteen cities, and I am guessing over 40 Museums and art institutions. I have made strides in my drawing, photography and video art practice that will nourish my painting practice many years into the future. And best of all, I have found a kind of artistic home in Europe being in the city of Berlin.
In short, my research was full of discovery and surprise in being exposed to works of art that showed me different ways of seeing as much as it taught me about who I am as an artist.
I think “transformational” would definitely be the right adjective for the effect of this award.