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Passion and Moment: Maria Antoniv
26th November to 20th December 2018
Open evening 27th November 7-9pm
Maria Antoniv captures moments. The flowers she paints are delicate or vigorous, fresh, growing, bursting with character and energy.
Painting flowers offers the chance to savour the moment and appreciate the fleeting beauty of nature. No two flowers are alike, and working in plein air allows Maria to focus on the subtleties of colour, shape, and light. She transforms her canvases into tributes to nature, working with impermanence to reveal character and mood. Maria’s canvases celebrate flowers that strain into the light, the ones joyfully growing through cracks as well as those which seem to bloom without effort.
Maria works with both a brush and palette knife to give volume and shape to her subjects. Her paintings express her feelings for the land – the contours, moods and colour palette. Through paintings, she invites the viewer to participate in her vision of the world.
Maria Antoniv is a Professional Visual Artist. She lives and works in Canada. Her work has been recognized within Canada and internationally in United States, Australia, United Kingdom and Ukraine. She has been widely recognized for her unique ability to capture colour, mood and details through the fleeting beauty of a growing flower. She draws inspiration from the flora that naturally occurs in nature.
Trained as a visual art teacher, Maria graduated from Vyzhnytcya College of Applied Art and continued her education at the Carpathian National University, Ukraine. On moving to Canada, Maria took graphic designer and digital painting training at the International Academy of Design and Technology in Toronto and pursued a career in post production field. She worked on the movies “Gladiator”, “Babe II. Pig in The City” in London, UK.
Although successful as both teacher and animator, Maria’s love of the outdoors naturally propelled her to painting flora. She has developed an appreciation of the balance of studio time with outdoor experiences, enjoying the challenges of both. In the body of work “Passion and Moment” created for traveling to Europe exhibits, her subject is flora, growing and blooming in Canadian soil as well as in London’s landscapes. The flowers on her canvases can be delicate and fragile, struggling into the wind or straining for the light. Still connected to the earth, they are growing, changing celebrations of the natural world in existence with humans.
Maria works with her intuition as well as a brush and a palette knife to layer colour, value and reveal character and mood. Her artwork captures nature with an impressionistic style which reflects on her observations, feelings and experiences at the moment. Maria enjoys exploring a new environment and is pleased to travel through the Europe, gathering inspiration, meeting other artists and art lovers to develop new ideas for her future creations.
Education: International Academy of Design (Canada), Ivan-Frankivsk State University (Ukraine), Vyzhnytcia College of Applied Art (Ukraine)
Latest Exhibits: Ripley Arts Centre (Bromley, UK), AUGB Gallery (London, UK), Toronto Botanical Garden (Toronto, Canada), “Paint Ontario 2018” (Lambton Heritage Museum, Grand Bend, Ontario), The Ukrainian National Museum (Chicago, USA), “150 Years of Light in Canada”, Propeller Gallery (Toronto, Canada), “Sesquicentennial Blooms”, Gallery Hittite, Yorkville and UpRuth John Gallery, Women’s Art Association of Canada (Toronto, Canada), 6x6x2017” Rochester Contemporary Art Center (Rochester, NY, USA), Westland Gallery (London, ON), III Triennale “Ukrainian Folkmodern 2015”, Cultural Centre “Vernisage” (Ukraine)