About

Bio

B. 1981. Vanessa McKernan is a Canadian visual artist from Toronto. She recently relocated to the Ottawa Valley where she is renovating a dilapidated indoor pool into a 1500 square foot studio space. Vanessa studied Painting and Drawing at Concordia University and completed her honours BFA in 2006. Within Canada she is represented by Wallspace Gallery in Ottawa and Spence Gallery in Toronto. In 2020 she was awarded the prestigious Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant for emerging artists.

Studio Practice

As a visual artist the studio is where I embark on an exploration of life's profound questions around mortality, love, human connection, and the intricacies of the human psyche. Painting is a means of processing, a way of deciphering the world, and an attempt to understand the infinite complexities of the human person. My paintings work within a narrative structure drawing inspiration from historical artworks, works of fiction, observations, and personal experiences. As I slowly build my oeuvre, I see that I am interested in describing the mythologies of our modern day through my identity as woman, mother, sister, partner and environmentalist. Though I like to begin each body of work with personal experience I am stuck by the way in which the act of painting has a supernatural ability to dissolve my sense of self, pushing my compositions to encompass universal themes and timeless inquiries.

Since 2021 I have been integrating landscape, more recently the garden, into my compositions. Elements from the natural world are used symbolically and metaphorically to represent and express states of the psychic self. Using flora and fauna alongside the figure, recent works portray moments of tranquility, contemplation, surrender and epiphany. The garden is presented as a mythical space where the viewer is invited to embark on their own journey of introspection and revelation.