Artist Residency Information Session + Application Workshop

Artist Professional Development Workshop Series

This event will be held on Zoom. It is free and open to everyone, but registration is required. Register by clicking here.

In this virtual gathering, RMG Associate Curator Hannah Keating will provide an overview of the RBC Emerging Artist Residency Program application, sharing tips for preparing your own application. Following a short presentation, she’ll answer questions from the audience.

Closed captioning and live transcription will be available through the built-in Zoom CC and Transcription features. ASL Interpretation can be arranged upon request. Please contact Hannah Keating at [email protected] to submit an interpretation request by May 1, 2025. All efforts will be made to fill a request, but if an Interpreter cannot be secured, we will let you know before the event takes place. Is there anything else we can do to support your participation? Please reach out to Hannah at [email protected].

OPG Sunday: Pretty Peonies

This time of year brings beautiful flowers! Create peonies, daisies, roses, sunflowers and happy pollinator bugs with clay in your very own plasticine garden.

Suitable for ages 3+

Free admission, no registration required.

The Robert McLaughlin Gallery is a proud participant in Ontario Power Generation’s Power for Change Project, supporting the areas and people where OPG operates.

OPG Sunday: Clay Creations

This month we’ll be getting our hands muddy with clay! In the studio, we are using clay to form coil pots, a popular method to create bowls and cups.

In the lobby, etch intricate patterns into scratch art paper, revealing metallic designs underneath. Patterning techniques and inspiration will be provided.

Suitable for ages 3+
Free admission, no registration required.

The Robert McLaughlin Gallery is a proud participant in Ontario Power Generation’s Power for Change Project, supporting the areas and people where OPG operates.

OPG Sunday: Dreamy Dragons

Join us as we design our very own fantasy creatures. Using acrylic paint and stamping we will create unique dragon collages that are cute and friendly.

Suitable for ages 3+

Free admission, no registration required.

We are using an art-technique called Abstract Art to create the texture, patterns and designs of our dragons. This project was inspired by the works of art in our current exhibition, Painters Eleven: Abstract Bonds

The Robert McLaughlin Gallery is a proud participant in Ontario Power Generation’s Power for Change Project, supporting the areas and people where OPG operates.

Show and Tell with Christina Leslie: Photo Emulsion Transfers and Gallery Representation

Free. Registration is required.

This is a how-to workshop for artists! Part creative workshop, part career conversation, we’re excited to have Christina Leslie lead a two-part session on photo emulsion transfers and gallery representation. Inspired by her Sugar Coat series in Likkle Acts, Leslie will show participants how to lift a photographic image from one surface to another to create interesting visual effects. Following this interactive demonstration, Leslie will share reflections on and answer questions about her experience gaining gallery representation, including what it is, why it was the right fit for her, and how her relationship with Stephen Bulger Gallery began.

Is there anything we can do to support your participation? Please reach out to Hannah at [email protected].

The Artist Professional Development Workshop series is generously sponsored by the RBC Foundation’s Emerging Artist Project.

About the Artist: Christina Leslie is an artist based in Pickering, Ontario. She earned her BFA in 2006 at OCADU in Toronto and her MFA at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia, USA in 2022. Her photographs have been featured in numerous publications and exhibited both nationally and internationally. Her latest series “Sugar Coat” has been exhibited virtually on Ain’t Bad Magazine (2021), Featureshoot.com (2022), PetaPixel.com (2022), and in-person at BAND Gallery (2023). She has exhibited nationally and internationally at GAMU (2009), Royal Ontario Museum (2010), Pier 21 (201, Art Gallery of Windsor (2017), Peel Art Gallery Museum and Archives (2020), Prefix ICA (2021), and McMaster Museum of Art (2022). Much of her photographic practice revolves around the themes of de-colonialism, identity, immigration, issues of marginalization, history, memory, race, and her West Indian heritage. She often utilizes text and alternative and historical photographic processes to produce her photographs. She is a member of an all-female photography collective, Silver Water Collective and is represented by Stephen Bulger Gallery in Toronto.

OPG Sunday: Colourful Collage

Collage with us! Join us to create colourful stripes, funky blobs and wild splashes. Tie it all together with a fancy silhouette topping to make your masterpiece POP out!

Suitable for ages 3+

Free admission, no registration required.

The Robert McLaughlin Gallery is a proud participant in Ontario Power Generation’s Power for Change Project, supporting the areas and people where OPG operates.

Family Day: Peculiar Portraits

Update: Due to weather, this program has been canceled

This family day, explore the portraits in Resistance, then join us in the studio to create your own! There are many ways to do things in a unique way. Your self-portrait will be weird and wacky.

Suitable for ages 3+

Free admission, no registration required.

The Robert McLaughlin Gallery is a proud participant in Ontario Power Generation’s Power for Change Project, supporting the areas and people where OPG operates.

Expressive Arts Workshop: Transformation Collage

“Make Art. Feel Better.“

Presented in partnership with PeaceLove and Ontario Shores Centre for Mental Health Sciences, join us for an Expressive Arts Workshop focused on how art can promote mental well-being. The evening will start with a tour of the exhibition Breakthrough featuring the art of Jack Bush who found healing and joy through his art. The workshop will provide a safe space for participants to share, self-reflect, grow and heal through artful collage. No art experience is required. All materials and aprons will be provided.

Registration is required.

About PeaceLove
PeaceLove promotes mental wellness by using creativity and expression to inspire, heal, and communicate. We believe everyone deserves a safe space to share their emotions. Our workshops are a place to create fearlessly and honestly without judgement. A place to be vulnerable, celebrate, and empower each other.

About Ontario Shores
Ontario Shores Centre for Mental Health Sciences is a leader in mental health care, providing a range of specialized assessment and treatment services for people living with complex mental illness. Patients benefit from a recovery-oriented environment of care, built on compassion, inspiration and hope. Ontario Shores engages in research, education and advocacy initiatives to advance the mental health care system.

The Neighbours Art Hive with the LivingRoom Community Art Studio

The gallery invites you to join us for artmaking and community connection in The Neighbours Art Hive between 12-3:30pm every Friday from January 10 to February 14, 2025. Passionate and helpful volunteers from the LivingRoom Community Art Studio will be onsite to support your creative explorations and cultivate a warm and welcoming environment for all. Participants are welcome to take their projects with them or hang them up for everyone to enjoy!

The Neighbours Project, installed at The Robert McLaughlin Gallery (February 2024).

What to expect:

Everyone is welcome; no art experience required.

These drop-in events are free.

You’re welcome to come and go as you please.

Coffee, tea, and light snacks will be served.

What is an art hive?

Art Hives are safe, accessible spaces that enable people of all ages to participate in free public relaxation. In an Art Hive, traditional hierarchies, processes, and ways of being can be deconstructed and re-imagined in playful, personal, and compassionate ways.

The Neighbours Art Hive is a temporary installation at the RMG that transforms the gallery into an active studio space with help from the LivingRoom Community Art Studio. Outside of these facilitated sessions, we also invite all our neighbours to drop in any time during operating hours to make use of the free art materials on their own time. The RMG is located at 72 Queen Street, Civic Centre in Oshawa, across from the McLaughlin Branch of the Oshawa Public Libraries. The Neighbours Art Hive is in Gallery A, which is located on the lower level of the RMG. It is accessible by stairs or elevator. Between the elevator and Gallery A, you’ll pass our public washrooms. We have an accessible single-stall washroom as well as gender-inclusive multi-stall washrooms. Read more about our facilities here.

Upcoming Sessions:

Friday January 10, 2025

Friday January 17, 2025

Friday January 24, 2025

Friday January 31, 2025

Friday February 7, 2025

Friday February 14, 2025

Presented by The Catherine and Maxwell Meighen Foundation.

Curating Climate Crisis: Sustainable Exhibition-Making

This event will be held on Zoom. It is free and open to everyone, but registration is required.

Contemporary visual art exhibitions are well poised to contribute to conversations about climate change, yet too often they are part of the problem they critique. Independent Curator Katie Lawson will present reflections on both practical and theoretical considerations of how exhibitions are shaped by climate change discourse and address key knowledge gaps that remain in creating, caring for, and presenting art in sustainable ways. As a team member of the Centre for Sustainable Curating, Lawson will share accessible resources to lessening the environmental impacts of exhibition making. A question and answer period will follow.

Closed captioning and live transcription will be available through the built-in Zoom CC and Transcription features. ASL Interpretation can be arranged upon request. Please contact Hannah Keating at [email protected] to submit an interpretation request by October 16, 2024. All efforts will be made to fill a request, but if an Interpreter cannot be secured, we will let you know before the event takes place.

Is there anything else we can do to support your participation? Please reach out to Hannah at [email protected].

About the presenter:

Katie Lawson is a curator and writer based in Toronto. She has curated exhibitions for City of Barrie (2024); Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery (2024); Images Festival (2023); Toronto Biennial of Art (2022 + 2019); MacLaren Art Centre (2021); the Art Museum at the University of Toronto (2018); the Art Gallery of Ontario (2018); Y+ Contemporary (2017), and RYMD Reykjavik (2017). Lawson was awarded the Hnatyshyn Foundation Fogo Island Arts Young Curator Residency in 2023.

Katie is a graduate of the Master of Visual Studies Curatorial program at the University of Toronto, where she previously completed her Master of Arts in Art History. She is currently working towards a PhD in Art and Visual Culture at Western University, and a team member of the Centre for Sustainable Curating. She contributes to a range of print and online publications. She was the Editorial Lead for the Toronto Biennial’s double catalogue Water, Kinship, Belief (2022) and was the Art Editor for the Hart House Review (2016-2019).

The Artist Professional Development Workshop series is generously sponsored by the RBC Foundation’s Emerging Artist Project.