ARTIST BIO

Maureen Bradshaw

Maureen Bradshaw is a Toronto-based artist. She spent her early years in Northern Ontario, surrounded by wilderness. Always creating — drawing, painting, and sewing — she went on to pursue graphic design at St. Lawrence College in Kingston, Ontario. In 1985, she began working in Toronto’s design industry. She continued to upgrade her skills with evening courses at the Ontario College of Art and Design. There, she studied fashion illustration and structural drawing. Maureen spent over sixteen years as a graphic designer in Toronto. For the last ten years of her career, she was the creative director of her own successful design business.

In 2010, Maureen joined Project Art Toronto, an artist collective in the heart of Toronto. There, she was inspired to develop her unique painting style with loose lines, energized brushstrokes, and unusual colour palettes. Around the same time, she designed an online leisure brand, “Lovbird Design”, applying her drawing skills to organic cotton clothing.

Over the past two decades, she has enjoyed spending summer weekends with family in Temagami, Ontario, and has found inspiration from its natural landscape. Temagami’s boreal and ancient pine forests cover over 634,000 hectares, and are where black bears, moose, otters, beavers, and mystic loons find sanctuary.

ARTIST STATEMENT:

Wild, green space is shrinking, so we find ourselves at a crossroads. Do we destroy it all without thinking, or do we begin to find balance and new empathy for the animals that live there? In each painting, I present their soulful energy in a fresh, dynamic, and contemporary way. As these wild creatures continue to struggle to co-exist along-side us, I want to remind you that they do have purpose. With this collection, my intention is to soften your indifference to these valid beings and instead choose to protect them and their habitats. Working on canvas, wood, or paper, I begin each painting with loose brushstrokes in acrylic and then a detailed outline of the subject using oil stick or acrylic marker. Finally, to define the image, I apply minimal brush strokes, allowing layers of base colours to come through.

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