news/Spotlights

How Yousuf Karsh took his most famous portrait.

How the iconic portrait of Queen Elizabeth II led to “a Karsh in every pocket.”

How Reid's idyllic painting The Story cemented his reputation.

How the art collective Kiss & Tell fought lesbian erasure in Drawing the Line.

Giorgia Volpe recycled materials to create powerful commentary on culture and the environment.

Unpacking the layers of meaning in Tim Whiten’s Lucky, Lucky, Lucky, 2010.

Exploring Tom Forrestall’s meticulous realism.

How Takao Tanabe reveals more than meets the eye in Cormorant Island, Looking South.

Suzy Lake’s The Natural Way to Draw came from her earliest artistic inspirations.

Norman Takeuchi's Hastings Park and the echoes of Japanese Canadian internment of the 1940s.

How Little Boy Blue, 1897, marked a turning point for Sophie Pemberton.

How Michael Snow’s Venus Simultaneous experimented with cut out figures and forms.

In Model T Ford, c.1955–65, Maud Lewis evokes the freedom of a car ride in her early years of marriage.

Mary Pratt’s Eggs in an Egg Crate, 1975 transforms a tragic event into a moving still-life.

Marion Nicoll’s Alberta IV: Winter Morning, 1961 evokes the winter landscape of her home province with bold primary colours.

The strong, sensuous silhouette of Tower of Ivory, 1924 by Margaret Watkins features the model, dancer, and health advocate Marguerite Agniel, who used this work in her book that advocated wellness.

Miss America, 2012 by Kent Monkman is an inspired reinterpretation of the eighteenth-century ceiling fresco Apollo and the Four Continents, by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo.

In Pavane, 1954 by Jean Paul Riopelle, the artist pays homage to the great Impressionist painter, Claude Monet, and his beloved water lilies.

In 196 Apples, 1969–70 by Gathie Falk, the artist presents different degrees of texture, ripeness, and bruising.

Abstracted and haunting, Forest, British Columbia, 1931–32 by Emily Carr shows the spiritual power of growth and the energetic life force of trees.

Mystery accompanies this painting by Elizabeth Cann of The Soldier’s Wife, 1941 an isolated woman of mystery.

On a trip to the farthest point south on the globe, Doris McCarthy painted Antarctica from Above, 1991, capturing a dramatic moment of summer illumination

With Voyage 1, 1988, Carl Beam offers a searing commentary on the so-called discovery of North America by Christopher Columbus

How Vest One, 1969 by Betty Goodwin was an artistic breakthrough and the starting point for a three-year artistic preoccupation

Inspired by “the wild orange-red flowers” that grew around his house, Eli Bornstein created Double Plane Structurist Relief No. 3, 1967–69

Cercles chromatiques de M.E. Chevreul (detail), 2006 by Arnaud Maggs emphasizes the artist’s exploration of time

Agnes Martin’s With My Back to the World, 1997, lays bare the artist’s desire to make art about the intangible experiences in life

Luxurious vegetation and organic variations are bountiful in Jardin vert (Green Garden), 1958, by Alfred Pellan

Jagdeep Raina challenges fixed ideas about tradition in Paradise Lost, 2019.

Ken Lum takes on the workplace with his internationally celebrated photo-text work, Melly Shum Hates her Job, 1989.

In her multimedia project Untunnelling Vision, 2020, Jin-me Yoon imagines a planetary future with the interrelatedness of humans and nature.

Chun Hua Catherine Dong explores the possibility of existing in two places at once in their performance of Reconnection, 2021.

Anthony Gebrehiwot finds strength in vulnerability through his portraits of Black masculinity in Ebb and Flows, 2019

In Lowcanes, Camal Pirbhai and Camille Turner subvert artifacts of enslavement through visions of liberation

Henrietta Hamilton’s Demasduit, 1819, is the only known depiction of a Beothuk person created from life

Kazuo Nakamura’s tranquil August, Morning Reflections, 1961, features his signature blue/green colour palette

William Brymner declared the ambitious A Wreath of Flowers, 1884, to be his magnum opus

Walter S. Allward’s Vimy Memorial, 1921–36, commemorates fallen Canadian soldiers of the First World War

Alootook Ipellie explores the triumph over evil in Self-Portrait: Inverse Ten Commandments, 1993

Edward Mitchell Bannister painted River Scene, 1885, after achieving unprecedented success as a Black artist

Iljuwas Bill Reid’s Eagle and Bear Box, 1967, signals the Haida artist’s determination to counter Indigenous stereotypes

Rajni Perera thrives in a hostile world in I take a journey, you take a journey, we take a journey together, 2020

Brian Jungen takes his famous sculptures made with Nike Air Jordans in a different direction in Plague Mask, 2020

In On the Edge of This Immensity, 2019, Meryl McMaster turns to nature for knowledge and wisdom

Iljuwas Bill Reid’s The Raven and the First Men, 1980, honours the ever-curious Haida Trickster

Annie Pootoogook’s Cape Dorset Freezer, 2005, reflects on the collision of tradition and modern convenience

Presents from Madrid, 1937, announced Paraskeva Clark’s newfound political consciousness

William Brymner bears witness to state-enforced famine in Giving Out Rations to the Blackfoot Indians, NWT, 1886

The exuberant Formative Colour Activity, 1934, was Jock Macdonald’s first semi-abstract painting

Pitseolak Ashoona’s The Shaman’s Wife, 1980, is an arresting portrait of spiritual transcendence