WAG New Impressions 3 Jurors

Cole Swanson

Cole Swanson is an artist and educator based in Toronto, Ontario. He has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions across Canada and throughout international venues in North America, South America, Europe, and Asia. He is a two-time national fellowship winner through the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute for his research on miniature painting and fresco techniques in Jaipur, Rajasthan. Under the supervision of modern Indian artist and professor Nathulal Verma, Swanson studied techniques for the manufacture and use of natural materials, mineral pigments and handmade supports.

At the heart of recent work is a cross-disciplinary exploration of materials and their sociocultural and biological histories. Embedded within art media and commonplace resources are complex relations between nature and culture, humans and other agents, consumers and the consumed. Swanson has engaged in a broad material practice using sound, installation, painting, and sculpture to explore interspecies relationships.

Swanson has performed many professional roles within the arts and has held positions in curatorial work, museum and gallery administration, and post-secondary education. His teaching practice includes sessional postings for the Faculty of Art, Ontario College of Art and Design University (Toronto), and as full-time faculty, Professor and Program Coordinator for the Art Foundation and Visual & Digital Arts programs at Humber College (Toronto). He has appeared as author and subject of numerous publications and catalogues, and has guest lectured at academic and arts institutions throughout Canada and abroad. He is the current Art Editor for the Humber Literary Review.

Swanson has received support from public agencies including the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, the Toronto Arts Council, and the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute.

Juror's Statement

Juror’s Choice Award: Calista Goetz, Ruptured Euphoria, 2023

Ruptured Euphoria is a complex and confidently-made artwork that builds on multiple art historical and cultural histories in the pursuit of social justice. The artist’s uptake of several art media and iconography demonstrates the complex nature of the survivor experience. From a technical perspective, it can be incredibly difficult to bring these disparate visual systems together without one dominating the other; it is precisely the relationships the artist has built between the materials and processes that embody the tensions inherent in the subject (victimization, but also survival and recovery). The representation of beauty through Classical art, biblical cruelty through animal illustration, and psychic wildness through botanical imagery are deftly brought into communion. Beyond the important social narrative of this particular work, the artist showed me that they love the act of art-making, and that they embrace both the experimental and technical aspects of a contemporary practice. I look forward to seeing great things from the artist.

Best in Show Award: Calista Goetz, Standards Reflected, 2022

Standards Reflected is a quiet and powerful artwork. In this portrait, the artist has exceeded expectations on all aspects of the exhibition prompt, including stellar technical execution, succinct and well-articulated writing, excellent-quality documentation, and relevant in its conceptual territory. The media used — gouache and coloured pencil — are incredibly demanding, requiring a slow and thoughtful process of building up hues and textures with patience and intention. While simple on first appearance, the composition of the work employs subtle angle shifts and directional lines to good effect, complicating the tendency toward perfect symmetry. The use of colour is subtle and elegant, a product of truly understanding what the art material wants to do. The resulting portrait provides a certain mystique; it is gentle and strong, quiet and bold, beautiful on the surface and challenging in its depths.