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

Sorel Etrog’s Dream Chamber, 1976, evokes the secret world of thoughts and dreams

Layers of pulsating colour animate Françoise Sullivan’s Homage to Paterson, 2003

Nature and machine collide in Alex Colville’s dramatic painting Horse and Train, 1954

Domestic and work spaces overlap in Mary Hiester Reid’s Studio in Paris, 1896

Paul-Émile Borduas’s first entirely non-preconceived painting was Green Abstraction, 1941

Alex Colville’s Infantry, Near Nijmegen, Holland, 1946, sets the stage for his later work

With The Bather, 1930, Prudence Heward refused to idealize her female subject

Satire, religion, and nuclear disaster combine in William Kurelek’s This Is the Nemesis, 1965

Joyce Wieland plays with drama and disaster in Boat Tragedy, 1964

Françoise Sullivan’s Blocked Phone Booth (Cabine téléphonique bloquée), 1978–79

Paterson Ewen finds a new medium in, Solar Eclipse, 1971

General Idea picture themselves as pups to comment on the AIDS crisis in Fin de siècle, 1990

Paterson Ewen draws on the symbolic force of water in Coastline with Precipitation, 1975

Homer Watson creates a mystic landscape in Moonlit Stream, 1933

Greg Curnoe cries foul in The True North Strong and Free, #1–5, 1968

Shuvinai Ashoona presents an extraordinary scene in Hunting Monster, 2015

Norval Morrisseau invokes traditional beliefs and personal struggle in Water Spirit, 1972

Kathleen Munn’s ambitious modernism animates The Dance, c.1923

William Notman makes a crowd come to life in Skating Carnival, Victoria Rink, Montreal, 1870

Molly Lamb Bobak documents her fellow servicewoman in Private Roy, Canadian Women’s Army Corps, 1946

William Kurelek’s Reminiscences of Youth, 1968, opens one memory into another

Lionel LeMoine FitzGerald finds harmony in From an Upstairs Window, Winter, c.1950–51

Prudence Heward captures the spirit of an age in Girl on a Hill, 1928

In Northern Lights Septet No. 3, 1985, Gershon Iskowitz’s dramatic colours take a monumental turn

Oviloo Tunnillie animates stone in Dogs Fighting, c.1975

Ozias Leduc’s Erato (Muse in the Forest), c.1906

Jock Macdonald seeks the infinite in Fall (Modality 16), 1937

Harold Town’s Festival, 1965, evokes wild nights and cosmic depths

Rat Life and Diet in North America, 1968, portrays Joyce Wieland’s take on the Vietnam War

In 1910 Remembered, 1962, Jean Paul Lemieux revisits his youth

Paul Kane explores a Romantic wilderness in The Cackabakah Falls, c.1849–1856

Shuvinai Ashoona collaborates with John Noestheden to create Earth and Sky (detail), 2008

Real and abstract meet in The St. Lawrence, 1931, by Bertram Brooker

Zacharie Vincent evokes the origin story of the Wendat chiefs in Head of a Moose, from Nature, c.1855

In A Coming Storm in the Adirondacks, 1879, Homer Watson enters the American landscape

Yves Gaucher’s harmony in Two Blues, Two Greys, 1976

Jack Chambers stops time in his unfinished painting Lunch, 1969

Louis Nicolas’s, Birds, n.d., captures the natural world

Gershon Iskowitz’s Autumn Landscape #2, 1967, turns to an abstract sky

Robert Houle’s Kanata, 1992, Nishnaabe waabdaan (“our people will witness it”)

The Russian modernism of Paraskeva Clark’s Wheat Field, 1936

Ozias Leduc’s Boy with Bread, 1892–99, visualizes both sound and time

Lionel LeMoine FitzGerald’s idyllic vision of Manitoba, Summer Afternoon, The Prairie, 1921

Oviloo Tunnillie’s creative process revealed in Self-Portrait with Carving Stone, 1998

Helen McNicoll captures the bustle of a French village scene in Marketplace, 1910

Oscar Cahén’s cover illustration for Hiroshima, 1946, foregrounds the human costs of war

Joyce Wieland kisses her way through the national anthem in O Canada, 1970

In Legend of the Woman Who Turned into a Narwhal, c.1974, Inuit artist Pitseolak Ashoona builds a biography from a traditional tale

Homer Watson’s studio frieze, 1893–1894, catalogues the artists he most admired

Music provides the energy that animates Bertram Brooker’s Sounds Assembling, 1928

Greg Curnoe’s beloved bicycle is the subject of Mariposa 10 Speed No. 2, 1973

Huron-Wendat artist Zacharie Vincent likely saw himself in his image of Tecumseh, Huron, n.d.

Framework of Tube and Staging Looking In, Victoria Bridge, 1859, helped launch the career of Montreal photographer William Notman

Soaring over the Manitoba landscape, Gershon Iskowitz found the basis for the unique style of Lowlands No. 9, 1970

The political meets the spiritual in Saulteaux artist Robert Houle’s Morningstar, 1999

Tom Thomson captures the magic of a bright sky and blazing clouds in Sunset, 1915

Painted in Paris, Blossoming, 1956, reveals Paul-Émile Borduas’s American style

Wild Flowers of Canada: Impressions and Sketches of a Field Artist (1978) is Molly Lamb Bobak’s illustrated autobiography

Rich colour and rising lines give Yves Gaucher’s Blue Raga, 1967, its tone and mood

William Kurelek makes his intentions clear in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, 1950

Zig-zagging bodies show the drama on a war’s home front in Paraskeva Clark’s Parachute Riggers, 1947

Jean Paul Lemieux finds a new way of seeing his Quebecois home in The Evening Visitor, 1956

Paul Kane created The Buffalo Pound, c.1846–1849, for Hudson’s Bay Company governor Sir George Simpson

Anishinaabe artist Norval Morrisseau puts his own meaning into Self-Portrait Devoured by Demons, 1964

Harold Town’s Day Neon, 1953, mixes modern art and pop culture references

When British royalty took notice of Homer Watson’s The Pioneer Mill, 1880, it launched his career with a subject that hit close to home

Rink Theme—Skaters, 1969, is Molly Lamb Bobak’s dynamic interpretation of an everyday scene

Paterson Ewen’s Bandaged Man, 1973, reveals the artist’s inner state

Pigment comes alive in Painters Eleven member Oscar Cahén’s Small Combo, c.1954

Critics at the time struggled to understand Paul-Émile Borduas’s Study for Torso or No. 14, 1942

Françoise Sullivan sees past and present in Portraits of People Who Resemble One Another, 1971

A rural girl shows modern poise in Prudence Heward’s Rollande, 1929

With Doc Snyder’s House, 1931, Lionel LeMoine FitzGerald gave a modest house monumental presence

Shuvinai Ashoona brings inspiration and insight to her Cape Dorset Composition (Community with Six Houses), 2004–2005

Joyce Wieland’s The Water Quilt, 1970–1971, comments on environmental fragility

Why Louis Nicolas depicted Unicorn of the Red Sea, n.d., in his seventeenth-century drawing of the new world

General Idea mixes commentary and commercials in Test Tube, 1979

Harold Town turns broken ornaments into dazzling abstraction in Silent Light No. 11, 1968–69

Paul Kane paints the Hudson’s Bay Company fur trade in Fort Edmonton, c.1849–56

In Sandy Bay, 1998–99, Saulteaux artist Robert Houle conjures his past

Impending dooms unsettles William Kurelek’s In the Autumn of Life, 1964

Human suffering is Bertram Brooker’s subject in The Recluse, 1939

Kathleen Munn’s Untitled I, c.1926–28, was originally part of a larger work

Norval Morrisseau charts his creative evolution in Man Changing into Thunderbird, 1977

William Notman’s photograph St. Regis Lacrosse Club, 1867, documents a Mohawk team and a sport’s promotion

Greg Curnoe takes his palette for a spin with Large Colour Wheel, 1980

In Asagao, 1961, Montreal artist Yves Gaucher innovates in printmaking

Alex Colville’s Black Cat, 1996, balances between the known and unknown

Pitseolak Ashoona’s Untitled (Birds Flying Overhead), c.1966–67

Helen McNicoll’s The Little Worker, c.1907, connects viewers to its young subject

Tom Thomson breaks free of convention in Cranberry Marsh, 1916

Snowshoe Maker, by 19th-century Huron-Wendat artist Zacharie Vincent

In Nature Evolving, 1960, Jock Macdonald’s ideas about art come to life

Jean Paul Lemieux’s The Ursuline Nuns, 1951, is a portrait of traditional Quebec

Jack Chambers’s Hart of London, 1968–70, is an experimental tour de force

Paraskeva Clark’s Myself, 1933, signals a grand entrance into Canadian art

General Idea’s Mondo Cane Kama Sutra, 1984, is a subversive take on representing queer identity 

Oscar Cahén’s Multi-part Mural for the Imperial Oil Executive Office Building, 1956, brought modernist style to corporate space

The crystalline forms of Kathleen Munn’s Descent from the Cross, c.1934–35, bring a traditional subject into the 20th century

With his iconic painting To Prince Edward Island, 1965, Alex Colville explores ways that we see

Why Paul-Émile Borduas’s The Black Star, 1957, is an abstract masterpiece

Robert Houle reclaims Manitoba in Muhnedobe uhyahyuk (Where the gods are present), 1989

Artful Edwardian tourists in Helen McNicoll’s Sunny September, 1913

Jean Paul Lemieux’s Self-portrait, 1974, captures the artist’s feelings about the passage of time

How William Notman’s photo Mrs. Hillard’s Dead Baby, 1868, lovingly documented loss

Yves Gaucher’s Yellow, Blue & Red IV (Jaune, bleu & rouge IV), 1999

Harold Town pays homage with In Memory of Pearl McCarthy, 1964

The Little Plant, 1947, by Lionel LeMoine FitzGerald 

In drawings like Plants, Louis Nicolas recorded the early days of colonial contact in New France

Pitseolak Ashoona’s Summer Camp Scene, c.1974, encapsulates the season

The power of puppets in Paraskeva Clark’s Petroushka, 1937

by Paul Kane

Zacharie Vincent’s Zacharie Vincent and His Son Cyprien, c.1851

The perceptual “wow moment” of Jack Chambers’s 401 Towards London No. 1, 1968–69

Shadows and illuminations in Paterson Ewen’s Gibbous Moon, 1980

Creatures break free in Shuvinai Ashoona’s Composition (Attack of the Tentacle Monsters), 2015

Tongue in cheek, ink in hand, Greg Curnoe redraws borders in his Map of North America, 1972

Kathleen Munn’s Cows on a Hillside, c.1916

Jock Macdonald’s Etheric Form, 1936

General Idea’s Nazi Milk, 1979

Norval Morrisseau’s Observations of the Astral World, c.1994

Oscar Cahén’s Maclean’s illustration, 1952, satirizes Canadian art 

Prudence Heward’s At the Theatre documents new female freedom

Tom Thomson’s Approaching Snowstorm, 1915, captures nature’s fury