The Neighbour’s Art Hive Artists Activation

Join us for artmaking and community connection in The Neighbour’s Art Hive!

Each session is led by a passionate and talented local artist-educator who will guide creative exploration while fostering a warm, inclusive, and welcoming space for all participants. All experience levels are welcome.

Sessions are hosted from 11am–2pm in Gallery A.

Sessions
🟆 Saturday, January 17, 2026: Collage & Zines with Hayde Esmailzadeh

🟆 Saturday, January 24, 2026: Expressive Arts: Exploring Paper Sculpture Techniques with Carol Knowlton-Dority

🟆 Saturday, January 31, 2026: Storytelling Drawing: Comic/Zine with Anoosh Mubashar

🟆 Saturday, February 7, 2026: Collage & Zines with Ruckus Art Collective

🟆 Saturday, February 14, 2026: Learn How to Bead on Fabric with Leequette Santiago-Hinds

🟆 Sunday, February 15, 2026: Acrylic Pour Painting with Melissa Dipchand

What to expect:

These drop-in events are free.
You’re welcome to come and go as you please.
Engagement is flexible. Participants may take part in the artist-educator’s activity or engage independently within the Hive.
Everyone is welcome; no art experience required.
Participants are welcome to take their projects with them or hang them up for everyone to enjoy!

The Neighbour’s Project, installed at The Robert McLaughlin Gallery (February 2024).

The RMG is located at 72 Queen Street, Civic Centre in Oshawa, across from the McLaughlin Branch of the Oshawa Public Libraries. The Neighbour’s 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.

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 Neighbour’s 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.

January 17
Collage & Zines with Hayde Esmailzadeh

Join us for a creative and collaborative day of collage and zine-making. We’ll dive into zine-making and use drawing, writing, and collage to create your own self-published piece to share beyond the workshop. In addition, you will have the option to contribute to a collective group zine that will be kept at the Art Hive. All materials included. No experience necessary.

Hayde Esmailzadeh, also known as Zadeh, is a ceramicist, sculptor, and mixed-media creator. She is the editor-in-chief and co-creator of Zene Magazine, an independent publication focused on self-publishing and platforming emerging and underrepresented voices in contemporary art and culture. With a background rooted in hands-on making and storytelling, Hayde’s work focuses primarily on material exploration and community-driven publishing.

January 24
Expressive Arts: Exploring Paper Sculpture Techniques with Carol Knowlton-Dority

Participants are encouraged to explore their own voice as they experiment with a wide variety of paper sculpture techniques. Through guided discovery and problem solving challenges participants can discover many ways to cut/tear, curl, roll, fringe, fold, pleat and attach paper.

Participants are welcome to explore the techniques and materials as they choose, or they may make a piece of artwork in response to prompts such as: create an expressive face, an alien or a magical garden.

Carol Knowlton-Dority is a Toronto-based visual artist whose work explores the evolving nature of emotional experience. Themes of love, loss, desire, resilience, and hope shape her practice, inviting viewers into a compassionate and reflective encounter with the deep interior life we all share.

In addition to her studio practice, Carol creates Expressive Art experiences for children, adults, multi-generational and special interest groups. She has led workshops for Government of Canada: New Horizons for Seniors, INNoVA: Inclusive Solutions for an Enhanced Workforce, City of Toronto: (Clark Centre for the Arts, Public Health, Shelter, Housing and Support Division, Special Events, Cedar Ridge Creative Centre), Scarborough Arts, Friends of Guild Park and Gardens, University of Toronto, St. John the Divine Convent, Jaya Yoga and throughout the Toronto District School Board.

January 31
Storytelling Drawing: Comic/Zine with Anoosh Mubashar

Learn how to create a mini zine or regular zine for a creative storytelling outlet with a wide variety of materials to fit your artistic expression!

Anoosh is a Toronto-based artist and a recent graduate from OCAD University. She enjoys working in many media, especially painting, printmaking and storytelling. The human mind inspires her and expresses her art through familial stories of nostalgia and growing pains. Her large-scale paintings often draw inspiration from her Pakistani background, particularly through the intricate scarf patterns found in traditional Pakistani scarves, which expose areas of culture that impact identity, relationships, power dynamics, and self-expression. She enjoys incorporating bold, vivid colours into large-scale, multi-panel paintings, featuring delicate images that explore the contradictions found in everyday life.

February 7
Collage & Zines with Ruckus Art Collective

Artists will have the opportunity to explore an array of materials, techniques and themes through the resources of the Art Hive and the skill sharing of their peers. Participants are welcome to work on their solo practice, but are encouraged to contribute their creative vision to a community collage destined to join the artworks living within the Art Hive. Whether you’re a collage fanatic looking for inspiration, a creative curious to explore a new medium, or simply searching for a lively studio to be enveloped in, come buzz with Ruckus at the Art Hive!

Ruckus Art Collective is an Oshawa-based group dedicated to supporting and uplifting the local arts community in Durham Region. Through the hosting of events, exhibitions, and collaborative projects, Ruckus provides a platform for artists to share their work, connect with peers, and engage with the broader public. The collective’s mission is to foster creativity, inclusivity, and dialogue while helping to amplify the voices and talents that define the region’s artistic landscape.

February 14
Learn How to Bead on Fabric with Leequette Santiago-Hinds

Using bead on fabric, participants are invited to explore their own patterns and ideas.

Leequette “Lala” Santiago is an American Canadian visual artist and founder of Santiago Studios. Her work explores her southern identity, spirituality and familial dynamics through a mixture of traditional mediums and textiles.

She uses her craft as a means of storytelling and personal reclamation, especially following her postpartum identity loss. Her process consists of meticulously weaving together mediums, playing with compositions and fiddling with light until she finds something that plays on the viewers senses.

She has been awarded the Emerging Artist Award (2021), The Robert McLaughlin Gallery Award (2023), The Robert McLaughlin Award Gallery (2024) and The Visual Artist Creation Project Grant from the Ontario Arts Council (2025).

Her work has been featured by Pampers, QuickBooks Canada, and in public art across Ontario. She is focused on expanding her exhibition and public art practice.

February 15
Acrylic Pour Painting with Melissa Dipchand

This activity will introduce participants to acrylic pour painting, also known as fluid art, an abstract technique where thinned acrylic paints are poured onto a surface to create dynamic patterns, cells, and marbled effects without traditional brushwork. Accessible to beginners, the process encourages playful experimentation with colour, flow, and movement, resulting in striking and unpredictable outcomes.

Melissa is an experienced arts educator and community-focused facilitator based in Durham Region. Over the past two years, she has served as a Lead Instructor for the Robert McLaughlin Gallery’s March Break programming, where she designs and delivers fun, highly engaging creative experiences for children and families. She also brings more than twelve years of teaching experience through Crayola: IMAGINE Art Academy. Deeply committed to building meaningful community connections, Melissa believes art is a powerful vessel for bringing people of all ages, abilities, and lived experiences together. Her practice centres on creating welcoming, inclusive environments where creativity becomes a shared and connective experience.

In partnership with The LivingRoom Community Art Studio, The Neighbour’s Art Hive is generously supported by the Ontario Trillium Foundation.

Sukaina Kubba: Not Soft by Nature

Curated by: Leila Timmins

Not Soft by Nature marks the first museum solo show in Canada by artist Sukaina Kubba. Building on previous research on the cultural production of textiles, the exhibition presents an expansive installation based on the history of lacemaking and its global trade. Oscillating between research and free-association, Kubba weaves together motifs, figures, flora and fauna from rugs and textiles from a family rug, a 17th century rug fragment, and multiple artefacts from the Permanent Collection of the Textile Museum of Canada. This anachronistic layering of various materials and time periods references earlier guild-based production of decorative domestic objects such as rugs, wallpapers, and fabrics, which would often borrow motifs from a wide array culturally specific designs and objects. Working in collaboration with MYB Textiles, the last remaining operational lace mill in Scotland, Kubba mirrors this approach, creating a painterly design influenced by various historical textile fragments and reproduced as large bands of lace that envelop the exhibition space. By including elements that evince the tools of their creation as well as various iterations and copies produced in different materials, the work reflects on lace as an object of cultural transmission as well as the histories of domestic, industrial, and colonial production that have shaped it.

Sukaina Kubba is an Iraqi-born artist whose work is rooted in material and cultural research, material experimentation, storytelling and drawing connections. Kubba has exhibited at Western Exhibitions, Chicago and Patel Brown, Montreal; in Toronto at Venus Festival, two seven two gallery, Patel Brown, Greater Toronto Art Triennial at MOCA, Mercer Union SPACE Billboard Commission, the plumb, The Next Contemporary, Art Gallery of Ontario and Aga Khan Museum; and in Scotland at Dundee Contemporary Arts, Centre for Contemporary Art, Glasgow Project Room, Glasgow International and Kendall Koppe. In 2026 Kubba will also exhibit at Carleton University Art Gallery and Oakville Galleries. Kubba has attended residencies at the International Studio and Curatorial Program, New York and La Wayaka Current, Chile. She is a sessional lecturer in Visual Studies at the University of Toronto, and was previously a curator and lecturer at The Glasgow School of Art.

OPG Family Day: Portrait Party

This family day, explore the portraits in the exhibition Homage, then, join us to create your own! Your self-portrait will be weird and wacky.

Start in the exhibition, Homage. Using a variety of cardboard shapes to assemble your portrait. Gluing the cardboard together to form a truly unique and wacky face.

In the studio, add vibrant acrylic paint and oil pastel colours to bring your portrait to life and show your self-expression through art!

About Homage
Paying homage is more than an act of reverence—it is a gesture rooted in respect and a way to acknowledge influence and inspiration. Artists often engage with the past to make sense of the present: responding to those who shaped them, the histories they’ve inherited, and the cultural forces that continue to shape our world. In this way, tribute becomes not only a recognition of influence, but also a means to challenge, reinterpret, and build upon it. Click here to learn more about Homage.

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: Bountiful Botanicals

Inspired by the exhibition Natural curiosities, join us to create botanical artworks. Flora such as flowers, fruits, veggies, and plants will be represented in our artworks.

In the studio create your own abstract patterned papers with acrylic paint. We will then cut our papers into the shapes of plants, gluing together colourful collages that pop against a simple background.

In the lobby we are creating linework drawings in METAL. We will etch the shapes of leaves, flowers, veggies or fruits in the shiny aluminum. Then use sharpie markers to colour them in, leaving them with a reflective shimmer.

E. May Martin (Canadian, 1865 – 1957); Iceland Poppy; 1896; watercolour on paper; Donated by the Ontario Heritage Foundation, 1988, gift of Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Lande

About Natural Curiosities
Flowers and plants have long fascinated artists, serving as both subjects of study and sources of inspiration. They provide a way to refine skills in observation, form, colour, and light, while also embodying nature’s beauty and fragility. Drawing from the RMG’s permanent collection, this exhibition highlights a range of floral and botanical art. Some works offer precise studies that capture fine detail, while others take a more expressive approach to the natural world. Together, they encourage us to pause, look closely, and rediscover the quiet wonder found in nature.

Click here to learn more about this exhibition.

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.

Teen Art Zone Winter 2026

Come hang out at the art gallery! These sessions offer a welcoming space for teens to express their individuality, share new ideas, and try out a variety of art materials in a low-pressure environment. With a new theme each month, they’ll discover new ways to unleash their creativity, whether it be through painting, sculpting, mixed media or something else.

Free
Ages 13-17
Registration required
Class dates and details below

January 29, 2026
6-7:30PM

Taking inspiration from The Neighbour’s Art Hive, we are creating graffiti fences.

Using acrylic paint, our sculptures will tap into our unique individual creativity, and the ideas of community development and social connection through art-making together.

About The Neighbour’s Art Hive
As a place to make, rest, and connect, the installation, The Neighbour’s Art Hive, supports creative community development, social connection, and personal wellbeing through art-making experiences.
Click here to learn more about this exhibition.

February 26, 2026
6-7:30PM

We will explore Scott Rogers: Mutualism (Fixed Assets), considering the use of repurposed automotive junk and scrap materials. Teens will then use found materials to create an assemblage tile artwork.

About Scott Rogers: Mutualism (Fixed Assets)
Mutualism (Fixed Assets) is a new temporary public artwork for the backyard at Robert McLaughlin Gallery. This ambitious new installation builds on Rogers’ interest in human- built infrastructures for the care and support of non-human beings. Taking the form of a site-responsive bird feeding station, the work is assembled from broken automobile parts scavenged from roads and highways. This reuse of discarded materials connects with the industrial history of Oshawa, while proposing possibilities of ecological renewal out of the wreckage.
Click here to learn more about this exhibition.

March 26, 2026
6-7:30PM

We will take a tour of our permanent collection exhibition Homage, which features a variety of artists and works. After taking note of the impasto textured pieces, we will create our own!

Impasto is a technique that artists use while painting, laying thick paint on the canvas and to keep the brush strokes and palette knife impressions visible even after drying.

About Homage
Drawing from The Robert McLaughlin Gallery’s Permanent Collection, this exhibition explores how artists pay homage—to individuals, pivotal events, and shared experiences. Within these gestures of tribute lie acts of resistance, care, and the reclaiming of stories. Whether evoking ancestral knowledge, responding to collective grief, or reimagining iconic images, the artists in this exhibition use memory as a tool for both reflection and transformation.
Click here to learn more about this exhibition.

FAQ

What is the space like?
You are encouraged to either come alone or with friends! Plug into your own music or listen to the chatter. Materials and refreshments are provided.

We tend to keep the lights dimmed but they are still on. We play music on a medium volume, however this can be turned off upon request. The noise level in the room is about medium.

For more details on accessibility, visit this link: https://rmg.on.ca/visit/accessibility-and-accommodations/

Where is it happening?
The studio on the lower level. The gallery is free to visit. Walk in through the front doors, turn right and go down the stairs, turn right again once you see the door to the studio. Or, take the elevator near our gift shop to level 1.

Do I need to know how to do art ahead of time? Do I need to be an artist?
No! The art activities are beginner friendly. We offer all the necessary materials and instruction to complete a project. We also value abstract art, ugly art, and silly art. Feel free to try new things.

How do I contact the organizer?
Email [email protected] or call (905) 576-3000 ext.108

Opening Celebration: Haley Uyeda and Natural Curiosities

Help us celebrate the opening of Haley Uyeda’s solo exhibition featuring new works from the artist’s residency at the gallery!

We’re also celebrating a recently opened exhibition of floral and botanical art from the RMG’s permanent collection. Check out Natural Curiosities on Level 3!

More details to come.

This event is free and open to everyone. If there are ways we can support your participation, please contact Hannah at [email protected].

Community Connections

The Robert McLaughlin Gallery and the Oshawa Camera Club is teaming up with Community Development Council Durham’s (CDCD) Community Connections program to highlight the experiences of newcomers and immigrants in Durham Region. For this project, the participants took photographs that capture their lives in their new community and consider their important role within it. The contributions are celebrated in this exhibition and will be added to the Thomas Bouckley Collection, upholding Bouckley’s vision to collect images that reflect the continued evolution of Oshawa.

Shilpi Srivastava, Ladies’ Social Event at Oshawa Public Libraries, 2025

The CDCD is a not-for-profit organization that has focused on enhancing the quality of life for individuals, families and communities in Durham for more than 50 years. CDCD’s Community Connections Program gives opportunities for new immigrants to Canada to practice English in conversation circles, learn about their community, meet new friends, and enjoy social events celebrating equity and inclusivity.

OPG Sunday: Artsy Abstracts

This month we are exploring the abstract works in the exhibition, Hortense Gordon: Towards the New. Hortense Gordon, a Canadian painter, taught modern design and abstract principles for many years.

In the studio, we are creating geometric abstract works with acrylic paint and oil pastel. Our palettes will be monochromatic, mixing our paint colour with just black and white to make new tints and shades.

In The Lookout, we will create watercolour snowflakes as we admire the view of outside. Working with wet on dry painting techniques, paint an intricate, symmetrical snowflake that is one-of-a-kind!

Hortense Gordon (Canadian, 1887 -1961); Horizontals and Verticals; 1955; oil on canvas; Gift of Charlie Dobbie, 2000

About Hortense Gordon: Towards the New
Hortense Gordon (1886–1961) was a founding member of the influential artist collective, Painters Eleven, who were committed to advancing abstract art in Canada. Gordon valued the group’s shared energy and experimentation with abstraction. Buoyed by their support, Painters Eleven helped validate her move toward abstraction at a time when it was still controversial in Canada. Drawn from the RMG’s Permanent Collection, this exhibition highlights Hortense Gordon’s stylistic transformations and tireless pursuit of the new, celebrating her lasting impact on Canadian art.

Click here to learn more about this exhibition.

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.

Natural Curiosities

Flowers and plants have long fascinated artists, serving as both subjects of study and sources of inspiration. To hone their skills of observation, artists look to botanical subjects to study the effects of form, colour, and light and to translate the beauty and fragility they see in nature into poignant works of art. Drawing from the RMG’s Permanent Collection, this exhibition brings together a selection of floral and botanical artworks that encourage a closer examination of the natural world.

Despite similarities in their subject matter, some of the artists shown here present precise studies with fine details, while others take a more expressive approach. William Blair Bruce’s sketches, for example, offer attentive renderings of apricot blossoms, corn stalks, and forest foliage, whereas Yvonne McKague Housser’s painting Jack in the Pulpit (1946) focuses on a more formal exploration of shape and light. For Bruce, sketching outdoors was a way to explore spiritual and emotional resonance. He wrote about how everyday scenes can reveal deeper connections between life, ecology, and the human spirit. His botanical sketches, then, function less as scientific studies and more as meditations on nature. Whatever the artists’ intent, the sketches, paintings, and photographs in this exhibition invite us to pause, look closely, and rediscover the quiet wonder found in flowers and plants.

In Conversation with Ekow Nimako

Join us for an exciting conversation between exhibiting artist Ekow Nimako and local writer, educator, and researcher, Ashley Marshall. Together, Ekow and Ashley will discuss how the exhibition Building Black Civilizations: Journey of 2,000 Ships re-imagines ancient African kingdoms through an Afrofuturist lens. Digging into histories of the African diaspora and envisioning abundant Black futures, this conversation will shed light on Ekow’s artistic practice and the inspiration and imagination that produced the exhibition.

This event is free and open to everyone. Seating will be provided for all guests.

Read more about the exhibition, Building Black Civilizations: Journey of 2,000 Ships, here.

For more information on our facilities, please click here. If you have questions about the event or other requests, please email Hannah at [email protected].

Ekow Nimako, Wawa Aba, The Sunrise Dancer (circa 1358), 2022. Courtesy of the artist.

Ekow Nimako is a Toronto-based, internationally exhibiting LEGO artist who crafts futuristic and whimsical sculptures from the iconic medium. Rooted in his childhood hobby and intrinsic creativity, Nimako’s formal arts education and background as a lifelong multidisciplinary artist inform his process and signature aesthetic. His fluid building style, coupled with the Afrofuturistic themes of his work, beautifully transcend the geometric medium to embody organic and fantastical silhouettes.

Ashley Marshall is a Durham-based writer, educator, and researcher. Their research critiques how power, economics, and politics influence social change, while advocating for imagination and creativity as alternatives to neoliberal market logics. Her work aims to use collaborative measures to dissect and render visible the various social and material flows that (re)produce hegemonic power structures and dismantle them. Marshall reviews art for Rungh Magazine, is a former Board member of The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, and is an advocate for the arts. With a penchant for Black surrealism, fabulism, the speculative, and foodie fiction, Marshall’s work is interested in what we can learn from nature to think towards humane frameworks.

Building Black Civilizations: Journey of 2,000 Ships is organized and circulated by Dunlop Art Gallery.