Thomas Anfield
Adrian Balzer
The first painting is titled “Rewind” and represents how eating a piece of watermelon can take you back to your childhood. It’s 12x12" oil paint on Arches oil paper.
The second painting is titled “4011”. Most kids love bananas, at least I did. They were like candy to me! When my mom would come home from the grocery store, I’d rip the bag open to get to them. This painting is 11x14” oil paint on primed paper.
Louise Brennan
Graduate from NSCAD, Painter living in beautiful British Columbia. My work is quirky, kitschy and lowbrow; lots of fun!
The paintings I have listed reflect the theme through my use of colour and embracing painting as a joyful act and a form of play, recreating the experience I had when I first began making art without the restraints and restrictions learned later in life from art institutions.
“The tricksters/ The Hare and The Fox”, acrylic on hardboard, 10”x12” each, 2023. This diptych was inspired by several of my favourite Scottish fairytales from childhood, which feature the hare and the fox as sly trickster creatures who use their wits and playful nature to best their opponents and wreak general havoc.
“Vessel 2/ ERN.92”, Acrylic on Canvas”, 36”x48”, 2023. The second in a series where I explore vessels in various states of disrepair and abandonment set in brightly coloured landscapes. These vessels draw from childhood imagery I recall from cartoons, video-games and toys. The construction of the vessels is intuitive, the act of painting determines the end figure.
Kirby Delaney
I took up painting over covid to try to make space for fun and colour in my house, and to try out a hobby that I had not partaken in since I was in school. I wanted to use abstract acrylic, to try to celebrate the growth I see around me, and to study the riot of colours visible in our native plants, especially in spring! Painting has become a way for me to explore my neighbourhood, and appreciate familiar areas with new eyes. Looking at ground level is a way for me to see beauty in the small patches of the gardens around me as a world of its own. I have always been fascinated by insects, and as I sit in the grass in the park I started to notice and appreciate the flowers and leaves that made up their home.
Though I lack formal training, I try to see the community that I live in with the eyes of my childhood self and make space for wonder and playful shapes in my works.
Through bright colours and loose brushwork, I seek to create a reflection of my journey over covid, and to create space to play outside of my office job by focusing on the beauty of the natural world. I'm constantly excited by the possibilities of expression and the opportunity for mess that come with abstract acrylic, and I love it for allowing me to express my joy in the ultimate celebration of life and beauty.
**SOLD** False Solomon’s Seal - $250
Nathalie Delesalle
I am interested in abstract expression. I paint intuitively leading to much play with colour, form, line. During my process in painting these two pieces, I was reminded of my grade one students a long time ago as they finger-painted in art class. The joy and glee they had, expressing themselves with a medium using only their little hands, creating a super fun experience that became not only visual but tactile as well. I paint with that joy, getting jazzed by applying paint, pushing it around, scraping, spraying, adding, uncovering, and letting the previous layers emerge. All this without a brush. Fingers are involved too! That inner child is forever there.
Spring Nebula: The bursting forth of Spring
Emerging Embers: Colour, warmth, growth, new beginnings and eruptions from beneath
Stuart Dobell
80's Never Die is a piece that takes me back to my inner childhood. Growing up in the 80's watching these movies that are now cult classics & still some of my favourite movies to this day. I still feel like a child inside every time I watch these.
The Hero's definitely reflect on my inner child. Scavenging Comic books as a kid was the best. Waiting to see what your favorite hero did next. The big bold coloured lettering & illustration is what made me want to be a comic book artist. You can always dream right.
Monique Froehler
These pieces were created at the beginning of my journey to getting back to doing my own art. I had spent 13 years mostly away from art-making when staying at home with my children and never having time to myself.
For me, the dragonfly symbolises freedom. The place I am most myself is where I have spent my summers at my grandparents summer cabin at a lake in the North Okanagan. There, I am free. I live close to nature and follow the ebb & flow of the moment with family, friends, water, and wilderness.
The lake is teeming with dragonflies. Dragonflies have beautiful iridescent wings and body. It is said that the magical property of iridescence is associated with the discovery of one’s own abilities. It unmasks the real self and removes the doubts one casts on his/her own sense of identity.
These pieces represent the “Inside me” (the dragonflies) -the artist, resolving with the “Outside me” -the way I am seen in the world-mother, teacher, daughter, wife. These art pieces represent my joy at being free to be me and to follow my creative path again.
Ben Hewitson
These five homies were imagined and created based on a character I started painting about 9 years ago for street art installations. He goes by the name Stanley Young - He’s the guy with the big hair and glasses in this group, and is the nucleus of the five friends. I created Stan to embody everything fun about youth culture, what it means to be young, and as a reminder to me to stay young at heart.
Stan is a young adult, who loves cruising on his skateboard down the hills of old Victoria to Gonzales Beach. He loves graffiti art, and chilling with his homies. Wearing a Charlie Brown shirt and permanent smile from ear to ear, Stan has been painted in various street art stencils and graffiti murals across lower Vancouver Island. Today he has a refreshed look and is joined by his newly designed crew of Franco, Myf, Jace and Melody.
These works were created using multiple layered stencils and spray paint, similar to the process I use for my street art stencil paintings. Painted on birch wood panels, each one has been hand cut and individually shaped, making each of these stencil artworks as unique as the characters. Other colors available on request.
Shelley Hordiyuk
“There are days when you just need to be imaginative and playful. My inner child sees things in technicolor, invents beauty and creatures out of shapes. On days when my inner child is at peace and awake, I love to paint imaginary landscapes. This painting is the result of creating on a joyful day.”
Logan Langham
I’m a non-binary artist living at Fisherman’s Wharf in Victoria. I’ve tapped into my artistic nature again as an adult (I’m 52 this year) specifically to connect with and release my inner child and the joy they feel while making art. I’ve been painting again more intentionally in the last three years and now have a small studio I rent on lower Johnson. What a serendipitous find that was! I feel these three paintings from my “Reveal” series very much demonstrate the sheer joy of my inner child playing and creating with paint.
Janie Lucas
I love happy art…both in colour & theme! Flowers make me feel good! Fluid acrylic art gives a flow to the painting as demonstrated in my under painting. My inner child loves a world that sees beauty everywhere….. seeing the world as an idyllic place! Viewing things thru “Rose coloured glasses”
Jamie Murdoch
“The dragon sculpture shows the duality of dreams and how they can be both comforting and scary at times. I’m submitting this because I believe it meets the theme of inner child by creating part of the whimsical and fantasy worlds I often would explore in my imagination. (I used to have imaginary pet dinosaurs and dragons when I was little) and so by making this sculpture I was able to bring those into reality in a way!”
Anne-Marie Olczak
I've been visiting my inner child and all of her seventies memories with my work lately. My work is abstract, exploring colour and place through the grid. Recent work has had me diving into carousels of family slides for colour inspiration pulled from the super saturated tones of these images in an ongoing series called Kodachrome. As I've been exploring the colour in these slides, I can't help but have been drawn into the memories around these images. Memories of family barbecues, vacations and growing up in a suburb where kids ran around and played until the street lights came on.
Tag- You're It - triptych, 3 pieces 16x16" each. A largely white piece with a grid at its base, each segment of "Tag" is trimmed with colours pulled from photos of my siblings, neighbourhood kids and cousins. As the smallest kid, I always hung at the edges of the game, evading being "It" as long as possible. Inevitably a bigger, faster kid would snag me, but I always remember these games as a flurry of motion, with the colour representing the flash of each player as they move around in the game.
hIdenseek - 14X14" Hide and Seek was a monumental game in our neighbourhood, played at dusk, after softball games, every Thursday night in the summer. The deep blues of Hide & Seek are the colours of this game to me: the tones of summer nights and when players donned dark clothes and maneuvered through the shadows. to avoid detection and get back to home without getting caught.
PINK PANDA
Pink Panda (they/she) is a painter from Winnipeg, Canada living and working on Treaty 1 Territory. They aspire to create visual works that encourage one to explore the emotions and experiences of thought and feeling that arise in the present moment. Through the use of vibrant colourscapes and intricate line work, Pink Panda hopes to connect us all through their art. They enjoy working with chalk, acrylics, spray paint and UV reactive paints on a variety of surfaces. Exploring these mediums allows the artist to create a variety of aesthetics for the viewer's senses to absorb.This piece represents my journey to rediscover myself by engaging in a meditative process of confronting and processing past experiences.
The interplay of rhythmic and chaotic brush strokes and vivid colors embodies the fluctuating emotions and experiences that make up who I am, showcasing the resilience and strength needed to navigate through life's challenges.
Julie Proulx
The moments pass, enjoying with child-like wonder, the little marvels of the forest. Loving being immersed in joyful exploration. Suddenly, a cheeky Thrush struts in to join the fun.
About Julie
Julie Proulx is a west coast artist and graduated from Emily Carr University of Art and Design. She is grateful to live on W̱SÁNEĆ territory in Brentwood Bay, BC, Canada. The beauty of nature through the seasons provides abundant inspiration for the west coast landscapes. Drawing from light, colour and movement, Julie Proulx translates West Coast forest and coastline scenes into contemporary art works using multiple layers of thin wisps of dyed wool rovings and a single grooved needle. The fibre layers manipulate light and colour similar to an acrylic painting. Textile art is very tactile, liken it to running a finger over the bark on a spruce tree or the lichen on a rock. A portion of all sales donated to support non-profit marine conservation initiatives within BC.
Susan Salvati
My work captures the melancholy of a recollected childhood. This piece is of a time when children still played outside alone. We were wrapped up in warm clothing and set out into the winter air until going in to a warm meal.
I am a mixed media artist from Victoria, British Columbia, grateful to live on the traditional territory of the Lekwungen speaking peoples. I love language, both written and visual, and studied English, Italian and French at the University of Victoria. I also love story in all its forms. And people watching; getting to know a little about people and making connections to them, especially through my art, is the best. Art history is fascinating to me. My Italian background seems to play out in my art. I feel influenced by Renaissance artists and Georgia O’Keefe. The play, freedom and mystery of the creative process are endlessly interesting and exhilarating for me. I feel so thankful for the gentle and encouraging teaching I received from Canadian abstract artist, Andrea Soos.
Adrien Smart
“If the goal of the portrait painter is to capture an essential piece of an individual, then there is nothing quite as inspiring as a child’s expression when they’re having a terrible time. Before we learn how to feign excitement or mask exhaustion, our toddler-selves are a window into how we really feel.
My work tends to focus on a single subject; spotlighting them in a moment or scene. As a writer in University, I was instructed to steer away from melodrama lest it leave the reader rolling their eyes. As a painter I believe that everything should be on the table, and an eye-roll is just as good as a gasp. I only have a moment of your time after all: it would be a shame if I didn’t try to put on a show.”
I'm a painter & writer from Victoria, BC. My specialty is portraiture, but let's face it: it doesn't hurt to have a few still lifes and landscapes in your repertoire.
A few constants through my works are: a desire to capture individuals in unique and expressive portraits, and to draw a large amount of my inspiration from a world saturated by pop culture.
I'd like to think my pieces are eclectic; soft but intense, funny but with an edge of seriousness, and always mindful to be at the forefront of technology but with a hand-made humanity.
Helen Windsor
“Through My Eyes” is based on how it feels being silenced as a child with one’s own feelings, as if their emotions were not valid. Always seeing the freedom that is around, a hand is always there to stop the sense of freedom and bring it back to a state of being alone with one’s own thoughts. You push past the hand to see the brightness that is always around knowing full well that what you feel is the truth.
