This summer, I created the series Toronto, you’re beautiful, sharing this city’s treasures with you in verse and colour. In the fall, my paintings of Sunnyside beach and Kew Beach were included in a Local Club’s Fall Members Exhibition 2025. This was my first exhibition and represented a tangible culmination of the creative work I’ve been doing this summer.

These pieces capture the essence of the series twofold. First, Sunnyside Beach on the West End and Kew Beach on the East End of the city hold space for the rest of the series paying tribute to the sweeping mosaic that is Toronto. Second, the series was made entirely in the summer and what better way to represent that fevered frenzy than with two sun-bathed beaches on opposite ends of the city.

It was nerve-wracking to share a wall with career artists, many of whom had been painting for decades, creating deep, vibrant, multi-layered and multi-faceted works of art that drew viewers in at once. I assuaged these fears by reminding myself that art is a birthright: the right to create and express how we uniquely move through this world, regardless of skill level or artistic status.

Similarly, I’ve always considered myself to be more of a writer than an artist, so it was hard to allow my art to stand alone and speak for itself. When I share art online, my writing carries my voice bringing viewers along with the the way I was feeling when I created a piece. Would the art by itself hold up? Would it still tell my story without my words backing it up?

Earlier this year, I wrote Finding the purpose of my creative practice in which I arrived at a guiding principle for my art:

I create art to enshrine the ordinary moments that make a life. On post-it notes, in the margins of overused journals, and in scattered sketchbooks that fill my home; through deep despair and towards a light that persists behind a barely-parted curtain, here I am and this is my story.

At the exhibition, I saw people light up with nostalgia as they engaged with my paintings.

“I remember the lifeguard house well. I once dated the lifeguard who worked there.”

“I live right around the corner from here so I’ve spent a lot of time on this beach.”

It stopped being about me, my story, my experiences, and it started being about them — about weaving together shared experiences that weren’t mine to create a seat of collective consciousness.

As I write, I will always tell my story, but as I paint, a new purpose emerges which is to tell your story, our story, and the story of those to come.

I create art to enshrine the ordinary moments that make a life. Here we are are and these are our stories.

Every year, I visit Montreal. On my trip in 2020, I sat by the Lawrence river watching it flow by. The sun had set, the river was dark and troubled, and the soft glow of the Montreal skyline lit up the night sky. I captured the moment with a coarse ball-point pen as best as I could.

It’s not a great drawing — the perspective is off, it’s very two-dimensional, and some of the buildings are leaning off to an angle. Still, it is a tribute to that time and place: Montreal and I in 2020.

This year when I went back, I sketched La Fontaine Park as Montreal life meandered by: people sun-bathing in the grass, students studying by the pond, couples lying together, a woman making a wreath of wild flowers, and someone playing the guitar.

It is rewarding to see how my line work and my perspective have improved since that first visit. My sketchbooks are a reflection of the triumphs and tribulations of the last five years — in my art, but also in myself.

My first visit was in my mid-twenties. I hiked up Mount Royal, rowed a boat in Beaver Lake, biked along the Lachine canal and then around the islands, all in a single day with the sun glaring down on me. After all that, I searched for a karaoke bar to round out the night, and was disappointed when I could not find one. The relentless passion of youth is endearing.

This year when I went back, I lay on a picnic blanket reading a book, sketching some trees, and watching day turn to night. My lines have gone from spontaneous and chaotic to measured and intentional; they draw a clear arc between then and now, between who I was and who I am, as I hold these different versions of myself — even the ones I want to forget.

A few years ago, I was fighting through a rough patch of health. My sketchbook is filled with waiting areas, doctors’ offices, and emergency rooms. Looking back on those sketches, I see frantic lines searching for a way out of the pain, but instead finding a way through it. They bear witness to my struggles and to the flicker of hope that found me.

My art practice has not only brought me closer to myself, but has also helped me find belonging. After the pandemic, I yearned for a deeper connection to the city and sought out people who shared my creative intention. I found the Urban Sketchers, a community of sketchers whose mission I shared:

Our mission is to raise the artistic, storytelling, and educational value of on-location drawing, promoting its practice and connecting people worldwide who draw on location where they live and travel.

With the Urban Sketchers, I tour my home city and the cities I travel to, recording places, moments, and the shifting seasons within myself, alongside a global community of people doing the same.

I create art to enshrine the ordinary moments that make a life. On post-it notes, in the margins of overused journals, and in scattered sketchbooks that fill my home; through deep despair and towards a light that persists behind a barely-parted curtain, here I am and this is my story.

Now, tell me yours.

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