SANDRA MANZI
BIO
Sandra Manzi was born and raised in Toronto and started her artistic journey in high school in the art program at Central Technical School. She then went on to study and graduate from the Ontario College of Art (now OCADU) in Toronto where she received her diploma in Fine Arts/Experimental Arts, and afterward received a B.A. in Fine Arts from the University of Guelph. Fresh out of University she started working at the prestigious Carmen Lamanna Gallery from 1989 - 1991 before starting to work at the Art Gallery of Ontario, where she worked for 30 years. During this time she was showing her paintings in various galleries in and around Toronto. In 2022 she moved to Hamilton and now paints full time in her home studio. She is a recipient of grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Toronto Arts Council, and has been a finalist for the Boynes Artist Award three times. Her work is represented by galleries in Toronto, Oakville, Hamilton, and San Francisco. Her paintings can be found in private collections throughout Canada, Europe, and the United States.
ARTIST STATEMENT
My creative process involves an interplay between visual research, drawing from sources such as autobiographical photography as well as found imagery. Through this process I wish to highlight and interrogate the tonalities and cultural universals prevalent in Western societies, delivering nuanced reflections on daily life, offering diverse perspectives on the human experience. I create paintings inspired by photographs capturing how people live, relax, shop, and move through public space; allowing me to observe human behavior. Rather than producing idealized images, I prefer to focus on what I observe around me with an eye on the patterns, contradictions and absurdities of everyday life. Painting allows me to express what is around us everyday but often missed because of its familiarity, while also trying to make the complexity of human encounters visible. Most of my life I've lived in a big urban city environment where crowds and the fast pace, routine, and our connection and disconnection, has become fertile ground for contemplation for my paintings. The images that develop create a desire to give them a new life through the tactile quality of oil paint, where I get to experience them again. Sourcing my imagery from an archive of personal smartphone snapshots which I organize into separate folders based on events I have experienced, themes develop which become the groundwork for various series such as people walking to work, and tourists in museums. I would characterize these paintings as a blend of simply observational and critical in tone, as they are unidealized images of our modern consumerist society, highlighting the leisure pursuits of the Western world.
My work is concerned with capturing split-second moments, a fleeting experience or memory, with figures often in motion or caught at just that second before movement. I try to create the souvenir of a sensation – a suggestion that sparks a flicker of nostalgia in the viewer and a potential narrative to think of. I enjoy giving a photographic sensibility to my work, hoping to further the sense of snapshot of a forgotten experience. I like to experiment with that moment where the elements of a photograph and the tactile quality of paint come together to create another unique realty. My themes, meanwhile, are observations provided by the society in which we live. I see myself as sort of a modern day Flaneur, as my paintings are often the result of my love for wandering through our urban landscape. I'm mainly drawn to depicting the candid movement and expressions of people I see in the city, but my subject matter has evolved to purely visual interests involving light and color and the texture of paint itself.
As a contemporary realist painter, I observe, collect and document people in everyday life. My work explores the beauty and emotion found in everyday situations - the quiet presence of a figure, people passing each other on the street, my family gathered for a special meal, or the glow of either natural or artificial light across people or simple everyday objects. Ultimately my inspiration comes from urban life with a goal to paint moments that feel both personal and universal. What I want to capture with my paintings is what's beautiful and real in the world around us. It's often the small, fleeting moments that hold the most meaning - the way light falls across people or things, or a subtle gesture that reveals something deeper.
During the pandemic, I think the thing we all missed most was the often shared collective experience that make up our day to day lives. Things like going into the city where the hustle and bustle of people going places - shopping, traveling to work or home, meeting friends, visiting galleries, or going to an outdoor festival, had suddenly ceased. I'm glad this is past us because I draw inspiration from the people I meet, narratives within street scenes, work environments, and local social gatherings. I am inspired by watching people. Storytelling and context is very important to me whether creating observational portraits, or larger paintings with figures and strong narratives. I look for intrigue in everyday situations and I love to capture the candid character of people.
In my current body of work I create paintings which invite the viewer to weave stories around people captured unawares, going about their daily lives. They are inspired by the photographs I take of street scenes which are full of activity. I paint in an expressively realistic style, and like the French Impressionists, I often crop my paintings in surprising ways, giving them a sense of randomness. These people are brought together by circumstance rather than by intention, and within seconds they will move apart again. Something I focus on is observing people in a busy urban context, and how each individual can be lost in his or her own thoughts. Sometimes portrait paintings develop from these same observations. They are not studio portraits, and the titles I give them suggest they are not posing for their likenesses. They are people that I have observed sitting in coffee shops, passersby walking in the streets, waiting in an airport, or browsing in a shop. In these paintings, by isolating them from their context, I'm forcing the viewer to imagine their inner lives. What are they thinking about? Can their expressions or body language give us an insight into their emotional state? Despite the bustle that might be going on around them, they are alone. The goal here is to make thought provoking paintings which ask us to consider the contradictions at the heart of our modern urban existence.
My artistic development is closely linked to my interest in vernacular photography and turning an upstaged snap shot of modern life into a work of art, specifically the transition of the medium of photography into that of an oil painting. Hence the aesthetics of photography slips into the subject matter as much as what i decide to paint does - which is often of people in everyday urban situations. My subjects are often the incidental, mundane, and originate from happenstance. The theme of my work originates from the observation of human behavior through scenes and scenarios of everyday life. From these observations I create contemplative oil paintings which depict everyday scenes of people in the city to highlight the overlooked, understated, and fleeting moments in life. Through his work, I seek to imbue the everyday with a sense of beauty and grandeur. My paintings combine the tactility of oil paint with the unintended beauty of vernacular photography to create compositions with a sense of ambiguity and open narrative, inviting the viewer to question what they see or finish the narrative as it relates to their own experiences. Focusing on city life and the routine everyday accoutrements of our existence, I wish to convey the innate tension between togetherness and isolation in urban environments. Motifs and subjects such as shop windows, urban architecture, pedestrians, and people in museums appear as signifiers for the nature of contemporary life.
GALLERY REPRESENTATION
Art Gallery of Ontario, Art Rental and Sales Gallery, Toronto
Art Interiors, Toronto
Christopher Clark Fine Art, San Francisco, California
Noma Gallery, Collingwood, Ontario
Crown and Press Gallery, Hamilton, Ontario
Summer and Grace Gallery, Oakville, Ontario
Lost In Composition, Seattle, Washington
EXHIBITIONS
2025 - Summer and Grace Gallery, Two Person Show, Oct. 9-26, 2025
2025 - 'The Power of She', Group Show, Summer and Grace Gallery, May 1-June 15, 2025
2025 - Elaine Fleck Gallery, Two Person Show, April 1-30, 2025
2024 - Elaine Fleck Gallery, Christmas Show, Dec. 2024
2024 - Elaine Fleck Gallery, Summer Group Show, August 2024
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., Solo 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, 20
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, Sept.13 - Oct. 23, 20
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
GRANTS AND AWARDS
2024 - Boynes Artist Award, 11th Edition Finalist
2022 - Boynes Artist Award, 7th Edition Finalist.
2022 - Boynes 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
EDUCATION
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
PRESS
https://italocanadese.org/2025/11/17/the-life-and-art-of-sandra-manzi/
Youtube Interview - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9KCgditLoM
Boynes Artist Award, 11th Edition Finalist -
"We are delighted to showcase Vintage by Sandra Manzi, a Finalist in the Boynes Artist Award 11th Edition! Description: Inspired by the works of Old Masters, Sandra’s 'Vintage' recontextualizes James Tissot’s painting 'Croquet', blending elements of art history with contemporary figures. As a figurative artist, Sandra captures fleeting human moments that spark bigger questions about identity and what it means to be human. This dialogue between past and present, tradition and technology, creates a timeless and thought-provoking narrative."
https://boynesartistaward.com/interviews/artist-sandra-manzi
https://boynesartistaward.com/interviews/artist-sandra-manzi-updated