"I strive to eclipse the ugliness of the everyday and celebrate beauty, grace, memory, joy, and connection," states our latest Canadian artist, Jennifer McGregor. Known for her acrylic works with translucent colors, her abstract forms appear as imaginary landscapes to the viewer. Organic forms and natural colors are paramount in McGregor's work. Originally from Alberta, Jennifer McGregor began a career in design before attending the Ontario College of Art and Design, where she specialized in drawing and painting. After spending three years in Florence, Italy, she returned to Toronto in 2006, where she currently lives and paints.

When she evokes her inspirations, she talks about nature: "My painting practice revolves around elements of landscapes such as hills, mountains, water, stones, and most recently icebergs, all of which are layered translucently as thin and permeable landscapes. For example, my series of cairns (piled stones) is influenced by stories of late 19th and early 20th century explorers being lost on ice or land, where the vastness of the environment and the smallness of ourselves is bridged only by wayfinders that mark our presence and direction. The forms are a reminder that we are here, but will in time succumb to the forces of nature."

Jennifer McGregor tends to work in cycles on landscapes or forms that for one reason or another pique her curiousity, be it mountain peaks, or water drops, or stones, or ice. She then begins to dissect these forms into coloured parts that, when layered, make a whole. According to the artist, her work evokes isolation. Lone objects on land or sea, our place alone in our environment, our impermanence and the shifting nature of landscape, celebrated through colour, form and texture.

See all of Jennifer McGregor's works