In our Artist File column, art advisor Diana Hamm of WK ART shares the artists that have caught her eye.

The Artist: Painting immersive outdoor scenes, Emmanuel Osahor creates sanctuaries for his viewers. He’s interested in illustrating the natural contrasts inherent in gardens while offering beautiful tableaus to engage in. Looking at gardens as places of refuge from daily life, he provides a break for himself, as much as for others, from the constant cycle of anxiety-inducing news, including recent events such as the death of George Floyd, the spike in anti-Asian hate and the ban on discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity in schools across Florida, all highlighting the continued oppression of marginalized communities. His work serves as an antidote to this — it’s a glimmer of hope, a moment of beauty. Emmanuel believes that beauty is necessary to surviving, and that surviving is the precursor to thriving.

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In our Artist File column, art advisor Diana Hamm of WK ART shares the artists that have caught her eye.

Artist Caroline Monnet explores ideas of “the home” and “our land” using industrial materials and techniques inspired by her Indigenous heritage.

The Artist: Caroline Monnet is inspired in equal parts by her Anishinaabe and French heritage. Her multidisciplinary practice explores what it means to have a dual identity — and how to reckon with it. Pulling references from her daily life growing up in Quebec, Caroline creates visually vibrant work that is at once playful and serious.

The Works: Exploring our contemporary relationship to notions such as “the home” and “our land” seen through both an Anishinaabe and Western lens, Caroline highlights the contrast between these two viewpoints. She grew up in Aylmer, Que., and her parents built and flipped houses on the side. As such, she was surrounded by construction and building materials. These have now become the defining characteristic of her own practice. Using elements such as Styrofoam insulation, polyethylene and multicolour sandpaper as her mediums, Caroline creates brightly coloured, abstract pieces that hold layers of meaning.

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In our Artist File column, art advisor Diana Hamm of WK ART shares the artists that have caught her eye.

Jenn Mann’s high-concept work explores identity, critiquing how we “sell” ourselves in today’s consumerist society.

The Artist: Jen Mann’s body of work explores the self and our obsession with how we present ourselves to the world. While the self-portrait has been a mainstay in art since the dawn of time and has evolved over the years (think Egyptian wall paintings to Rembrandt to Warhol), Jen’s interest lies in how we brand ourselves — a consumerist approach to both expressing ourselves and relating to other people. Her work is clever and multifaceted, including photography, painting, music video and sculpture. She draws viewers in with slick, beautiful surfaces and then surprises them with something deeper and darker in the underlayers.

The Works: The paintings themselves are beautiful and mostly self-portraiture. She paints
in a hyperrealist manner, starting with photography, then working off the photos to achieve the desired effect in paint. Color becomes a means of disrupting the realism: “Using color in the work takes it out of the everyday,” says Jen. “It’s now an unreal place, and using crazy colors helps people look at an image and see that it’s not part of the real world.”

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In our Artist File column, art advisor Diana Hamm of WK ART shares the artists that have caught her eye.

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“I have so many ideas all the time that I don’t sleep much,” says ceramic designer Janaki Larsen, happily reflecting on long days in front of the wheel and at the kiln. The acclaimed artist produces up to 100 ceramic vessels per day, notably creating dishes for Noma in Copenhagen when it was voted the world’s best restaurant (Janaki got the commission via a stylist friend when they worked on a cookbook together), so it makes sense she’s not wasting precious time lying down. Many creatives would burn out with so many hours spent working, but that’s precisely what gives Janaki balance — and especially so now that she has an expansive new studio, where those myriad ideas have room to fly. For our March 2022 issue, Janaki invited us into her new studio and shared her creative process with us.

Scroll down to see Janaki in her creative element!

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In our column, Artist File, art advisor Diana Hamm of WK ART shares the artists that have caught her eye.

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In our column, Artist File, art advisor Diana Hamm of WK ART shares the artists that have caught her eye.

The Artist: Beth Letain’s arresting, oversized canvases focus on color and form in a minimal style. The Edmonton-born, Berlin-based artist is influenced by other minimalists such as Agnes Martin and Mary Heilmann. Though these references can be seen in Beth’s work, her canvases feel distinctly her own through her brushwork and color. Her starting point is always drawing and working on a very small scale (think three by five inches). These little pieces are then translated into a larger form — typically six to 11 feet high — using oil paint.

The Works:  One of the most important starting points for Beth is the physical canvas. She doesn’t buy pre-primed canvas but does this herself — a process that involves applying layers of homemade gesso — which can take two to three days. This allows her to create a texture and the desired white she wants. Many of her works leave a section unpainted and her gesso base allows the contrast between the primed white and the saturated oil paint to be striking and a focal point in itself.

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In our column, Artist File, art advisor Diana Hamm of WK ART shares the artists that have caught her eye.

The Artist: Krista Louise Smith is a Brooklyn-based artist originally from Ontario. She’s been painting and drawing for years but, a few years ago, an inflamed nerve in her right arm completely changed her oeuvre. While she once painted highly realistic and figurative paintings, she has since started painting with her left hand and has a much looser brushstroke and palette. Her latest work captures subconscious desires existing outside of our physical reality.

Krista is inspired by Georgia O’Keeffe and Agnes Martin, which comes through in her treatment of color, as well as James Turrell and Doug Wheeler for their work with light. Knowing these sources of inspiration, her use of paint to render light almost becomes the subject itself.

The Work: Krista’s last exhibition, entitled Sonnets of the Subconscious, took place at Carvalho Park, a gallery in Brooklyn. The work is based on cloudscapes that seem to exist in a world of cotton-candy dreams. “I spend a lot of time looking up at the sky, but the shapes come from somewhere inside,” says Krista. “They seem to be somewhat specific to me and less specific in nature.” There’s an ethereal quality to these pieces that is both steeped in reality (or figuration at least) and completely otherworldly. Krista wants these canvases to be a form of escapism for the viewer, and in this she succeeds.

Each work’s palette is carefully thought out before she begins to paint but, beyond that, she allows her hand to work, freely painting the scene as it feels natural. She uses a variety of mediums in her works, which gives them a layered and thoughtful finish. “The work is preplanned to the extent of having established the overall composition and color,” says Krista, “but once I’m into the painting process, anything can happen because I keep my mediums — both acrylic and, later, oils — open by using water or spirits. Things start to mingle with gravity, and the thinness or thickness of the paint becomes trickier to control, which I like. I see where the paint takes me; it’s a balance of control and letting the paint do what it’s going to do.”

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