SHE IMAGINES
We will introduce you to four female visual artists whose work will be on display in the gallery in our Studio in St. Jacobs. These amazing artists represent a myriad of cultures, where their visions and imaginings are born of diverse and interesting experiences. The exhibition will run throughout the month of March.
Artists
Ana Raquel “Guaricha”
Ana Raquel is a Salvadorean, Toronto-based multidisciplinary artist, art educator, and mother. She graduated from the Ontario College of Art and Design (OCAD), with a major in Photography.
Her artistic approach and work revolves mostly around the multiple forms of life and how they manifest themselves through her womanhood and Mesoamerican heritage. The choice of media for Ana Raquel, responds to the subject matter she wants to depict, therefore, her explorations throughout her artistic career have allowed her to experiment with collage, transfers, photography, public interventions, textiles, drawing and painting.
Figure, line, texture and color play a poetic role in the interpretations of the topics she depicts in her latest work, which is greatly influenced by feminine, her own upbringing, her search for a rooted identity, her own motherhood and cultural baggage.
Agatha Fast
Agatha Fast, Mixed Media Artist
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
Agatha Fast is bold and innovative in her approach to painting. Applying generous layers of paint, together with found materials, she manipulates and alters the canvas surface to create rich textural and painterly surfaces.
Themes of nature, popular culture, personal and collective history, are drawn from life and work experiences in India, Europe, USA and Mexico which further enhance the visual stories. Recent works move between abstraction and realism, inviting the viewer’s own interpretation of story.
Born in Manitoba, Agatha graduated from the School of Art, University of Manitoba. Her work has been exhibited in Canada, Europe, Australia, the United States and Mexico.
Carolyn J. Parks
Carolyn Parks is a St. Jacobs fibre artist who works with the techniques of both wet and needle felting to create wool ‘paintings’. She makes art and teaches out of her lovely village studio while participating in exhibits or shows that intrigue her. She is excited to show a small, starting collection of pieces at Neruda.
The Collection: We Are She
This collection - one which is small and which will just continue to grow - features divergent female faces representing the idea that the spirit of creativity, action, innovation, freedom and hope have always resided within women. It is this spirit that connects women back and forth through time, place, and culture leading us to understand that we are, were and always will be - She.
Della vanDokkumburg
Della vanDokkumburg began sketching in 2018. When the pandemic hit, she made it a project to sketch buildings and structures in and around Woolwich Township. She continues to sketch houses, businesses, bridges, or whatever catches her eye. Della compiles some of her sketches into books; since 2020 she has published four books of sketches and is working on her fifth.
Shatira
Shatira is an emerging musician finishing up her undergraduate in Community Music and Social Entrepreneurship. Her artistry seeks to connect a collective consciousness that emulates love, expansion, and deeper understanding. As the Anishinaabe prophecy states, we are in the 7th fire. One of retracing steps, locating roots, and choosing which path to go down at the fork in the road.
You can find her on insta at - shatira_jackson
And youtube and facebook at - Shatira Jackson
