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Works of Art for Sale: Riverdale Hub Exhibitions

Discover Unique Works of Art for Sale at Riverdale Hub

The Riverdale Hub houses four gallery spaces featuring beautiful and thought provoking works of art for sale, located on the first, second, and third floors of the community center building. The Riverdale Hub Gallery is dedicated to employing the transformative power of art to engage Toronto’s east-end community, connect with other communities across the city, and provide a platform for local, national, and global conversations.

RAINING COWS

An exhibition by Morgan Sheardown

We invite you to join us for this artist reception.

Thursday, October 17th, 2024
Reception: 6 – 10pm
Artist Talk: 7pm

Delight in an evening of captivating art, lively discussions, and creative inspiration!

Exhibition:
October 8th to November 4th, 2024
Main Floor Gallery

Morgan Sheardown, the visionary artist, born and raised in downtown Toronto, transcends fine art and design. A graduate of OCAD University in Graphic Design, his artistic vision illuminates a wealth of possibilities that extend beyond the canvas. Recognizing the potential of his work to venture into new realms, he embodied his love of illustration, painting, and graphic design into new interdisciplinary forms.

Morgan’s body of work entitled “Raining Cows”, expresses the inspiration he gets from rain, colour and his appreciation of cows. He uses rain as a filter to distort and create different levels of abstraction. The cows are graphic however, his work is painted on layers to the feeling of rain. One can actually see the layers and splashes of rain creating a 3D like floating effect. The colours, the clouds, the rain and the graphic application all come together to create a happy and calming effect.

In these stressful and turbulent times, Morgan wants “Raining Cows”, to make people happy and to make them smile. However, Morgan also looks to “Raining Cows” as his symbol of triumph, withstanding the storms of his life.

Pictured: “RAINING COWS “Lost Sun”, by Morgan Sheardown, Mixed Media painted on multi-layered resin on panel.

Come Butterfly! It’s Late

An exhibition by Cheryl Bailey

Exhibition:
Sept. 3rd – Oct. 5th, 2024
Main Floor Gallery

“Come Butterfly! It’s Late” is Cheryl’s second solo exhibition of the year. The exhibition showcases a collection of paintings inspired by native meadows and mountains, inviting visitors to aesthetically appreciate the beauty of nature’s tapestry through layers of texture in acrylics.

With a background in biology, and through her artistic creations, Cheryl champions the importance of native plants to environmental sustainability and protecting pollinator populations.

“Visual complexity is distilled into carefully choreographed simplicity. Shapes, surface textures, and a limited palette are combined with a powerful and unifying black. A poetic re-interpretation of landscape emerges in my distinctive and authentic voice.”

“My paintings express a deeply rooted familial connection to the Canadian countryside. Mountains, rivers, hills, valleys, forests, farmland — I love them all!”

— Cheryl Bailey

Pictured: “A Day in the Hills”, by Cheryl Bailey, Acrylic on Canvas.

FOREIGN FLWRS

An exhibition by Nashid Chroma

Exhibition:
Starting June 15th, 2024
3rd Floor Gallery

Nashid Chroma is a Bengali-Canadian artist drawing inspiration from pop culture and ornate florals, with a bold saturated colour palette. Portraits of contemporary icons, mostly musicians, with flowers and embellishments partly obscuring their faces is the signature visual component found in Nashid’s art, shedding light on the phenomenon of celebrity worship in modern day society.

Nashid abstracts his subjects using visual motifs that relate to their upbringing, influences, and their art. These adornments both humanize and anonymize the person in question, highlighting the spatial gap between celebrities and fans.

Through his unique style of portraiture, Nashid challenges the instant recognizability of celebrities by striking a careful balance between familiarity and distance. While celebrities are real people with emotions, insecurities, and dreams, they are also idols of secular worship and adoration.

The question of intellectual property and copyright is flirted with in Nashid’s work due to the direct clash between an artist’s freedom of expression and a celebrity’s right to publicity. Consequently, the motifs act as a shield to protect Nashid’s artistic efforts, but their delicacy alludes to the power struggle between independent creators like himself and large corporate media entities.

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After graduating from University of Toronto with a Masters in Architecture, Nashid worked in this field before deciding to become a professional artist. Since then he’s grown his social media following to just over 200k followers between Instagram and TikTok; collaborated with brands like Disney, Adidas, and LCBO; and did a massive self-funded billboard campaign in Toronto back in 2021.

“Foreign Flwrs” includes a collection of large canvas prints of Nashid’s digital art as well as a series of traditional art pieces that he has created for this exhibition. Through the medium of portraiture, this exhibition delves into the intricacies of modern celebrity culture, examining the tension it creates between anonymity and authenticity.

In 2021, Nashid initiated a self-funded Art Scavenger Hunt campaign in Toronto and proactively presented his paintings across the downtown, from bus shelters, bike share stations to large scale billboards. Redefining the boundary between art and public advertising space, this showcase brought himself into the culture ethos of Toronto urban life.

Pictured: “LXRRY FSHRMXN“, by Nashid Chroma, Limited Edition Giclee on Canvas.

Works of Art for Sale
Works of Art for Sale, The Invisible Playground

The Invisible Playground

Starting March 6th,  2024

An exhibition by Miyaka Emon

Exhibition:
2nd Floor Gallery

Miyakah’s process begins with an impulse; an itch aimed at making what is invisible, elusive and intangible within them visible, visual and well defined. Their work comes from their gifts and unique sight as a black Neurodiverse (ADHD and ASD) person; in that way, each brushstroke is both stimming and an affixation of their innate ability to perceive and internalize the subtle, complex energies around them. Miyakah’s work surprises and revels in what is bold, defiant, dynamic and formless; in many ways it can be said that their playground consists of the conveyance of sensation, chaos and emotion, all the while highlighting the pockets of order that float within it. Miyakah is primarily based in Toronto, Canada.

Pictured: “OnSunset”, by Miyakah Emon, Acrylic and Oils on Canvas.

The Intensifying Storm

Poonam Khanna

Exhibition:
3rd Floor Gallery

Most of the earth’s water — 97 per cent — consists of undrinkable salt water. Freshwater from rain and snow sustains our plants and forests, feeds our freshwater streams, rivers and lakes, and enables life on land to thrive. However, rising temperatures are intensifying our planet’s water cycle. This means more frequent and intense storms in some areas, including Canada, where the average annual precipitation has increased.

Through my rainy day urban landscape paintings I tell the story of everyday life in the city as it is affected by rain. When it rains, I head out to take pictures through various kinds of glass, including car windows, bus shelters and a piece of glass from an old frame. I capture pedestrians, cyclists and cars on their daily journeys through the city in the storm. These images form the starting point of my paintings, which rely on vibrant colour grounds and soft edges.

Much as the environment erodes, the rain blurs the lines between objects, and many things start melting into one another. Delineations are no longer clear. And sometimes the raindrops contain their own mini landscapes, transforming how we see.

Car headlights glow on the pavement and sparkle in the raindrops, turning an otherwise dreary day into a beautiful one. The headlights and street lamps signal the attraction we feel to the conveniences of modern life. But the oncoming headlights also present a sense of foreboding and approaching danger, even as they dazzle.

In one of my paintings, “The Rose Emporium,” a lone pedestrian walks home at night. To her right is a flower shop, signalling the beauty of nature — though contained and clipped. On the road a car approaches from behind, bringing with it a sense of peril. In another painting, “Pedalling Through the Storm,” a determined cyclist bikes to his destination, navigating through a busy road even as the rain blurs the scene making it difficult to demarcate objects.

Pictured: Poonam Khanna, Rain-kissed Metropolis 3, acrylic on canvas, mounted on wood.

Works of Art for Sale, Rain-kissed Metropolis 3

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