Join us in the art studio for an oil-pastel making workshop with Vancouver-based artist, Zoe Ann Cardinal Cire.
As part of her expanded painting and sculpture practice, Cardinal Cire creates her own pigments, paints, and oil pastels using foraged, organic and synthetic materials. Working with pigments on raw canvas, her gestures bind to the warp and weft of the canvas rather than sit atop the surface. These works resist painting conventions, positioning Cardinal Cire’s work within a personal and inherited framework wherein a canvas is a shelter, a painting is a textile, and pigment is the land.
In this workshop, Cardinal Cire will share what she has learned about lake and raw pigments, and provide a hands-on demonstration with linseed oil and beeswax to create oil pastels. Each participant will go home with their own oil-pastel stick and contribute to a sculptural work called “Lac La,” on display in the artist’s exhibition In Plains Air.
The artwork, “Lac La”, is composed of oil-pastel sculptures cast in tin cans. These sculptures refer to food eaten in the bush, and more poetically, to recipes, forms of sustenance, and vessels for berries and medicine from Cardinal Cire’s experiences in the bush on her ancestral homelands on Treaty 6 Territory.
Lunch will be served at 12pm.
The workshop is open to 8 registrants. We are prioritizing Indigenous participation. A confirmation email will be sent to participants prior to the workshop.
This event is free and open for ages 12+. Please register to attend. If there is anything we can do to support your participation, please reach out to greta hamilton, TD Assistant Curator at [email protected]
Following the workshop, participants are invited to stay for an opening reception of In Plains Air, from 1-4pm, which will feature an artist-led tour of the exhibition.
Facilitator Bio Zoe Ann Cardinal Cire is a visual artist born and raised on Treaty 6 territory of central Alberta. Cire’s work talks with the culture that raised her: her kokom’s lineage of Beaver Lake Cree Nation and her moshom’s Métis lineage. These conversations oscillate between the terrains of paint, beads and textiles, focusing on place and enlivening material associations. Here, relations speak about language and memory, where it can be found, and what it says when it reaches.
Zoe Ann Cardinal Cire, Tante, dry earth pigments on raw canvas, 66”x 49”, 2026. Courtesy of the artist.
Supported by:
