SANDRA MANZI
BIO
Sandra Manzi is a representational painter from Toronto, currently residing in Hamilton. She is a graduate from the Ontario College of Art and Design (OCADU) where she received her diploma in Fine Arts/Experimental Arts, and also received a B.A. in Fine Arts from the University of Guelph. Sandra has exhibited in galleries in and around Toronto and Hamilton. She is a recipient of grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council and the Toronto Arts Council, and she is a two time finalist for the Boynes Emerging Artist Award. Her paintings can be found in private collections throughout Canada, Europe and the United States. She makes paintings which explore the relationships between figuration and abstraction by blending traditional and contemporary aesthetics - merging classic techniques with new ideas. Her process involves playing with the aesthetics of digital manipulation and translating it into the tactile, permanent medium of oil paint. The final work is a result of using references from images from her own observations, blended with images from art history, creating a signature artistic style that recontextualizes scenes from the past in order to make us question the present.
ARTIST STATEMENT
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Through the act of layering I create imagery that engages both hyperrealist and abstract techniques. As a figurative artist, I am fascinated by fleeting moments, and I layer images to express how transient and ephemeral experiences can be. I will combine two or three of these moments together as a way of connecting them to replicate my memories of that time and as a metaphor to how memories fade and blend together. This way of painting also allows me to work within the genre of Realism while also transcending it by creating compositions that embody fragments of a reality made up of different moments and places. My latest body of work is inspired by the Old Masters. By blending parts of Old Master works and other elements from the canon of art history with people from my own time, I wish to spark a dialogue between past and present; fact and fiction; tradition and technology.
Starting from images of people captured with my cell phone, my work directly references our current world in the digital age and how our smartphones have become an extension of our eyes and mind. These small moments that comprise our urban environment and everyday lives become a metaphor for the human condition. I am particularly interested in the people within the urban landscape, and it is through them that I examine the beauty of our shared human experience.
My primary intention is to lift the eyes and to elevate a moment that is seemingly ordinary. I use my camera to capture that moment when the magic happens - this can be just a millisecond in time when everything lines up perfectly - and use those as source images to make my paintings which explore the beauty and sublime in the mundane. Some images overlap and fade into each other suggesting a memory of several moments blended together, while others stand alone. But all are representative of the passion I have for light, color, and the drama that unfolds in a city. I've always had a passion in documenting urban street life, where I find inspiration in strangers with unguarded glances and gestures. My interest lies in capturing a moment in time which will never align the same way again - I am fascinated by the beauty of this concept and I bring it into my work through the use of my digital camera. Sometimes this happens organically at the moment when the picture is taken, and at other times it happens during the editing process when I play with the layering of multiple images. I look for moments where the meaning and narrative is open to many possible interpretations and is rife with thoughts pertaining to the human condition. Each painting starts from a scene I have observed and people I have seen within my urban environment. I find richness and inspiration in people in public urban spaces - in the moment they connect with all the accessories that come to define city life such as cars and signage; to the movement, chaos, rhythm, color, light patterns, and form that I observe. I'm especially interested in the stories that come from observing people within an urban setting, and find interest in the moments in which people intersect for that one split second.
There is a constant dialogue between painting and photography which exists in my work. The inherent accidental nature of composition especially in candid snapshots, the cropping of imagery and the ghost like layering that you get in a double exposure; all become metaphors of contemporary society and how we now experience the world. In a series of paintings where I've appropriated paintings from art history and blended them with scenes from photographs I've taken of our current times, I will combine these elements specific to the camera with the history of painting where more staging and composing was the norm. By blending references from art history with contemporary, everyday moments - I'm connecting the stories and people from the past with with who we are today.
Most of my source material comes from the photographs I take from my walks around the city looking for the spontaneous energy of street life to photograph - from the hustle and bustle of the rush hour commute, to street festivals, fairs, outdoor patios, to simply watching people interact with each other within their environment. Each painting is the product of the natural rhythm of the people walking through the city, interrupted by chance encounters that I choose to focus on - targeting the unexpected moments, rather then censoring them. This way strangers have integrated their way into the composition, exemplifying the true character of city life in their actions. The viewer is invited into an environment of contemplation of existential and social themes brought about through the layering of imagery - where the individual and the crowd, the idea of blending within our urban environment, and the notion of time is highlighted. I'm particularly interested in candid unconventional moments of beauty in city dwellers that are not really worthy of a painting, but which suggest in this candid imagery a narrative that is invigorated with honesty. The locations and things that inspire me are everything from fairs and street festivals, to subway stations, and street and store signage - anywhere where I can experience people connecting with their urban surroundings, whether with strangers or with people in their life, while moving through the city. I'm also inspired by recuperating found imagery from various sources where I'll sometimes blend them with my own photos, transforming them into a brand new entity, and hence inviting the viewer to explore the image in it's new context.
Currently, I've been working on a series of paintings where I blend these scenes from ones of different time periods, and from Old Master paintings - looking for small similarities and differences which speak of larger questions. By reworking old stories and myths, I wish to illustrate how they are still present today and so entrenched in our contemporary collective psyche. In these works I'm creating paintings inspired by the Old Masters, with imagery and composition that is in direct contrast to the traditional tropes seen in Old Master paintings. The candid everyday moment which would have not been considered worthy of being used for a painting during Renaissance. I Use photo editing software to overlay these historical paintings with contemporary images until I find a powerful composition that bridges our concerns of being human today with ones we had in our past. Blending an Old Master painting with a current moment which I've experienced in my immediate surroundings to spark dialogue between past and present, tradition and technology, fact and fiction. I believe the intentional clash of formats can evoke questions about the evolution of art and the impact of technology, while exploring questions regarding our relationship to our past. I employ a process where I layer images, similar to the way a film editor uses a technique called the cross dissolve. Conceptually, transitioning from one scene to another and blending two scenes together convey a passage of time, character movement, and storylines. It's often used to signal to the audience that they are entering a new scene and that time has passed, blending together two moments so they feel conceptually linked, in spite of the audience jumping through time and space. I utilize this technique in my paintings in order to generate ideas about the human condition, and to stir our subconscious. I see myself as a film director, composing narratives from unrelated source images in order to develop a mysterious dramatic scene. In a way I'm searching for “actors” either in photos I've taken, found photographs, film stills, or in old master paintings. Inspired by their body language, I invent stories with open narratives. They are layered paintings which play with space and temporal moments, fact and fiction; creating semi-transparent imagery which creates multiple narratives. I work in series to explore ideas that have to do with memory, nostalgia, the subconscious, as well as ideas of time and place. My inspiration comes from many sources - from my personal photographs of daily life, to art history, film, and literature.
In recent paintings I reference the different genres from the canon of art history - layering and combining images from art history with scenes of moments in daily life as I experience it in the present. I do this because I believe that although centuries may pass, human nature is routinely recycled. As an art history buff, I learned many things by seeing the parallel between art with culture and human nature. Through a blend of different periods and styles, I wish to get the viewer to reflect on the present in relation to our past. This series started as I was asking myself the questions of how do I make work that has value in this time in our lives right now, what is the work that I can make that has some meaning and can make some contribution to the very long conversation of art history as it relates to the human experience? My intention is to make us think about how people and our day to day lives may be similar or different from the way it was many years ago, and how artists have chosen to depict these events through the centuries. I'm also interested in how technology has mediated these experiences. If it is different, in what way? If it is the same, how and why might it be similar? I like to think that time has changed many things, but our emotions and what it means to be human has not changed. I capitalize on the intersection between traditional subjects such as portraiture, florals, and other genre's within the canon of art history, with the more mundane and non traditional imagery from our daily lives. Hints of certain art historical periods and movements such as 17th century Baroque art, Impressionism, and Surrealism get blended with digital applications to create a natural continuum of these movements that are constantly shifting as our realities change with technology.
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C.V.
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GALLERY REPRESENTATION
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Elaine Fleck Gallery, Toronto
Art Interiors, Toronto
Art Gallery of Ontario, Art Rental and Sales Gallery, Toronto
Crown and Press Gallery, Hamilton
Summer and Grace Gallery, Oakville
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​UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS
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2025 - Summer and Grace Gallery, Oakville, Solo Exhibition, May 29 - June 30, 2025
​2024 - Elaine Fleck Gallery, Summer Group Show, August 2024
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PAST EXHIBITIONS
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2024 - Summer and Grace Gallery, A Beautiful Life: Still Life Exhibition, May 30 - July 14, 2024
2024 - Elaine Fleck Gallery, Two Person Show, April 6-30, 2024
2024 - Crown and Press Gallery, February 3 - 21, 2024
2023 - Elaine Fleck Gallery, Toronto, Group Show, December 2023
2023 - Centre3 Gallery, Hamilton, Ont., Two person show, Nov. 3 - 28, 2023
2023 - Elaine Fleck Gallery, Three Person Show, Oct. 4-28, 2023
2023 - Elaine Fleck Gallery, Group Show, Sept. 7-30, 2023
2023 - Crown and Press Gallery, Hamilton, Ontario
2023 - Paula While Diamond Gallery, "Big Idea Show", July - August 2023
2023 - Square Foot Show - Florals, Online show, May 4 - 6, 2023
2023 - Art Gallery of Hamilton Annual Art Sale, Hamilton, Ont., April 27 - 30, 2023
2023 - Dundas Valley School of Art 52nd Annual Auction, Hamilton, Ont., April 10 - 15, 2023
2023 - Ironwood Cider House, Gallery, Solo Show, Niagara on The Lake, Ont., April 15 - May 4, 2023
2023 - Summer and Grace Gallery, "Joy" Exhibit, Dec. 1, 2022 - Feb. 27, 2023
2022 - Paula White Diamond Gallery, "Square Foot Show", Nov. 26 - Dec. 4, 2022, Waterloo, Ont.
2022 - Paula White Diamond Gallery, "Big Ideas Show", Oct. 27 - Nov. 12, 2022, Waterloo, Ont.
2022 - Art Gallery of Mississauga, Second Annual Juried Show of Visual Arts, Sept.13 - Oct. 23, 2022
2022 - Summer And Grace Gallery, Oakville, Ontario
2022 - 2023 - Art Gallery of Hamilton, Art Rental And Sales Gallery, Hamilton, Ontario
2022 - Earls Court Gallery, "Bouquet", April 7 - May 7, 2022, Hamilton, Ontario
2021 - 2023 - Art Gallery of Ontario, Art Rental And Sales Gallery, Toronto, Ontario
2021 - Toronto Outdoor Art Fair, July 2-11., Toronto, Ontario
2010 - George Brown College Gallery, Three Person Show, Toronto, Ontario
1998 - 2007 - Gallery Moos, Toronto, Group Shows, Toronto, Ontario
2008 - Fran Hill Gallery – “The Portrait Challenge”, Group Show, Toronto, Ontario
2004 - The Burston Gallery, “Crooked Grind”, Solo Show, Toronto, Ontario
2002 - Luft Gallery, “Hockey Card Portraits”, Solo Show, Toronto, Ontario
1998 - West Wing Art Space, “Fleeting Moments”, Solo Show, Toronto, Ontario
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GRANTS AND AWARDS
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2022 - Boynes Emerging Artist Award, 7th Edition Finalist.
2022 - Boynes Emerging Artist Award, 6th Edition Finalist.
2021 - Ontario Arts Council, Exhibition Assistance Grant
2003 -Toronto Arts Council, Exhibition Assistance Grant
2002 - Canada Council for the Arts Grant
2002 - Ontario Arts Council Grant
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EDUCATION
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1988 - B.A., Fine Arts, University of Guelph
1987 - A.O.C.A., Fine Arts/Experimental Arts, Ontario College of Art and Design
1984 - C.T.S.A.D., Fine Arts, Central Technical School, Department of Fine Arts, Toronto
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PRESS
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https://boynesartistaward.com/interviews/artist-sandra-manzi
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https://boynesartistaward.com/interviews/artist-sandra-manzi-updated
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