PA Day camp is all about creativity and art adventuring! Campers are encouraged to interact with art in fun and playful ways as they share their thoughts, and express their ideas through art. We will get hands on with some messy and imaginative art making activities that will truly inspire all budding artists.
*Cancellation requests received prior to the start of the program will receive a full refund minus a $15 administration fee. We do not issue refunds (partial or full) after the start of the program.
The RMG reserves the right to cancel programs if the minimum enrollment is not met. In the event of a program cancellation, a full refund will be given. If a program is cancelled, registrants will receive notice one week prior to the beginning of the program.
Join us for a mystical night of story telling and folk tales. From the Caribbean to Ireland, to India and beyond, be transported to a place of wonderment through a magical night of discovery.
Performing artists from Durham Storytellers, Dianne Chandler, Kesha Christie, Enid De Coe, and Brenda Beck,will weave stories of magic that entice the imagination of childlike wonder and thrill.
Durham Storytellers is an enthusiastic group that aims to keep oral storytelling alive, promote an awareness of storytelling and illustrate how stories fit in today’s society. They convey each story without books or notes, and are considered part of the performing arts. Members are from all walks of life and at various stages in their storytelling journey. They strive to inspire others to want to share and tell their stories.
Experience a mesmerizing Moko Jumbie performance by award-winning Miss Coco Murray, accompanied by live West African drum and percussion. Coco Moko Jumbie pays homage to a traditional masquerade figure that serves as a spirit and protector of the village in Western/Central African regions. This resilient stilt dance tradition is a symbol of emancipation as a traditional Carnival character, celebrating contemporary Caribbean culture.
Collette “Coco” Murray is an award-winning Afro-diasporic dance artist-scholar, cultural arts programmer, educator, and arts consultant with over 25 years of experience in the Canadian arts sector. Her work centers on West African, Caribbean folk, carnival arts, and stilt-dance traditions. As a passionate advocate for equity in the arts, Coco blends performance, education, and community engagement to promote anti-racist dance pedagogy and culturally responsive programming. She’s currently pursuing a PhD in Dance Studies at York University.
Enjoy a casual exhibition tour of We are ten thousand hands that plant seeds with Seemil Chaudry, Community Engagement Assistant, South Asian Visual Art Centre. Seemil will guide participants through the exhibition, sharing stories and behind-the-scenes insights on the artworks on display.
Installation of We are ten thousand hands that plant seeds at The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, 2025. Photos by Toni Hafkenscheid.
Nini’s Ice Cream Truck will be serving up sweet treats. Cool off with ice cream or shaved ice in a variety of tasty flavours that are sure to satisfy the tastebuds.
RMG Fridays are free community events that bring together various art forms. Designed for all ages they feature a variety of live music, performances, exhibition tours, and highlight community partners, artists and local businesses.
Dwelling Stains II, 2023. 16″ x 20″. Henna & Ink on Wood.
Guest artist Judith Grace Vijaysenan will be joining us. Visit the studio to learn about her art practice. Try your hand at henna art on wood and take home your finished product. No experience required!
Judith Grace Vijayasenan is an Indian-born, Toronto-based visual artist. Her medium styles incorporate oils, acrylics, ink and henna on Wood. Judith likes to base her pieces on memory, land, and small connections that she has to her past and present land (India and Canada). She is graduated in June 2023 with a BFA in Drawing and Painting and minoring in Social Science from OCAD University. Judith’s work has been exhibited in Ada Slaight Gallery: Gathering Divergence (2022), OCAD University’s GRADEX 103 (2023) and The Clarke Center for the Arts in “Marinating in our Surrealistic Land” (2024) group exhibition.
The RMG reserves the right to cancel this event due to circumstances beyond RMG’s control or not reasonably anticipated, including but not limited, to weather, or inability of facility to host Event.
In this exhibition, local artist Par Nair presents paintings and embroidered artworks inspired by the garden outside her family home in the region of Kerala in India. For many years, Nair’s mother has tended the garden, nurtured its growth, and savoured the fruit it bears with her family. Her mother and grandmother continue to enjoy the garden and the view it provides each day from their windows. In part, Nair views this enclosed domestic space as a symbol of the expectations and limitations placed on the women in her life. At the same time, she captures its beauty and vitality, allowing the edges of her painting to appear loose and soft as if the garden itself might shift or float away. While grappling with her experience of prescribed gender roles, Nair uses her paintings and hand-embroidered works to experiment with freedom and malleability, describing a place from her grandmother’s imagination that “centres nothing but dreaming.”
Lush with mature trees and foliage, Nair’s garden is suffused with light. The paintings’ rosy hues are drawn from the vibrant palettes of Malayali homes, which hum in harmony with the warmth of the sun. Among the paintings are a pair of poetic love letters embroidered on traditional garments called mundus and an installation of 200 embroidered mango leaves in shades of green and brown. Reenacting the rhythms of traditional craft and gardening, these meditative works reflect on the push and pull between the artist’s two homes and pay homage to feminized labour of the near and distant past. Derived from photographs and memories, the place from my grandma’s dreams is an immersive exhibition that transports viewers and the artist to a place of abundance that is at once real and imagined. Actualized through a lens of hope and reminiscence, it is a dream made real.
Par Nair(she/her) is an Indian born artist and educator who lives and makes in the GTA. Par’s art practice pays tribute to ancestral and cultural roots, while intimately and speculatively reimagining diasporic futures through oil paintings, hand embroidery, installation, and creative writing. Par earned her Master’s in Interdisciplinary Arts from OCAD University and has shown her works nationally and internationally. Notable showings include Art Museum at University of Toronto, Craft Ontario, The Textile Museum of Canada, Nuit Blanche, The maritime Museum for the Atlantic, Rajiv Menon Contemporary (LA) and The Kochi Biennale (India). Par currently holds the position of Sessional Faculty at OCAD University, where she teaches painting and art theory.
The RBC Emerging Artist Residency Program is generously sponsored by the RBC Foundation.
Back by popular demand, this free event encourages seniors (age 55+) to spend the afternoon curating their own program. We will offer refreshments, tours and drop-in art making sessions.
Schedule of events: Scroll further down to see all details!
1- 3pm – Light refreshments in Arthur’s 1 – 3pm – Record and CD Acrylic Painting Activity in the studio 1pm and 2pm – Guided tours of the RMG’s current exhibitions starting in the lobby 1:30 – 2:30pm – Canoe on the Lake sketching class with Jade Wysotski in the lookout
Untitled design – 3
1:30-2:30pm │The Lookout │1st Floor
Canoe on the Lake Guest Instructor:Jade Wysotski Working with graphite and graphite blend pencils, this piece will bring you back to calm days on the lake. We will capture the beauty of a Northern Ontario landscape using reductive techniques to communicate rich values and soft textures. Enjoy creating a work of art suitable for all drawing abilities.
1 – 3pm │Studio │1st Floor
Join us in our onsite art studio to create mandala acrylic dot-paintings on CD’s and Vinyl Records. Fun for total newbies and veteran artists alike. Drop-in at any time throughout the senior social and spend any amount of time creating. All materials provided, don’t forget to take home your unique creation!
1 and 2pm │ Lobby │Main Floor
Meet us in the lobby for exploratory exhibition tours. View historical Canadian artworks that are protected and selected from our Permanent Collection, including the influential Group of Seven, an Andy Warhol work and Painters Eleven member, Hortense Gordon.
1 – 3pm │ Arthurs │4th Floor
Join us in our charismatically renovated event space, featuring lush autumnal views from above Oshawa. We are serving free, light refreshments including hot tea, coffee and small bites. Perfect to warm up and socialize with new and familiar friends!
Receive 10% off on regular priced items in our gift shop. Not including books or member pricing, in store only.
This event is supported by Sienna for Seniors Foundation.
Read more about the exhibition here. This event is free and open to everyone. If there are ways we can support your participation, please contact Sonya at [email protected].
Join us for a free expressive arts therapy-based workshop that invites deep reflection and creative exploration in response to the work of artist Georgia Fullerton. Through guided movement, intuitive artmaking, and reflective writing, participants will journey through themes of emotional memory, ancestral connection, and personal transformation. No art experience is necessary—just a willingness to trust the process. Come as you are and leave with a renewed sense of self-awareness and creative insight.
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.
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. Together, these artworks remind us of the enduring power of art to honour and connect—inviting us to consider what, and who, we choose to remember.
Pete Smith (Canadian, b. 1975); Dougie’s Tree; 2017; oil on canvas; Gift of the artist, 2018
About the Permanent Collection The Robert McLaughlin Gallery’s Permanent Collection includes more than 4,700 works, featuring nationally significant modern Canadian abstraction, the world’s largest collection of works by Painters Eleven, and growing holdings of contemporary and public art. We collect with intention—reflecting diverse voices, lived experiences, and the evolving issues that shape Canadian art and our local community. Click here to search our collection.
Hortense Gordon (1886–1961) was an important figure in Canadian modern art. Trained at the Hamilton Art School, Gordon spent her early career making ceramics and painting traditional landscapes, but it was her later embrace of abstraction that defines her legacy.
Gordon returned to teach art at the Hamilton Technical and Art School and married fellow teacher John Sloan Gordon. Each summer the couple travelled widely, visiting galleries and filling their sketchbooks with new artistic ideas. While her husband preferred more traditional, academic styles, Gordon was drawn to the avant-garde. Inspired by what she saw in Europe and the United States, she began experimenting with more modern styles—including abstraction in the 1940s.
Gordon’s journey as an artist reflected broader changes in 20th-century art. Towards the New follows this transformation—from Gordon’s early landscapes to her later embrace of abstract art. Throughout her career, she engaged new ideas and followed contemporary approaches to artmaking in both her teaching and her own practice. Despite resistance from her husband and the art establishment, Gordon taught modern design and abstract principles for years before fully adopting them herself. Celebrated American abstract expressionist teacher, Hans Hofmann, wrote that Gordon was “an extraordinary person…always directed towards the future and progress in Life and Art.”
In 1953, Gordon 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.
Georgia Fullerton’s art tells a deeply personal story of healing, transformation, and self-discovery. Through her art, she has navigated trauma, embraced change, and pursued personal growth. Now, as an expressive arts therapist, Fullerton helps others uncover the transformative potential of creative expression.
In 2010, Fullerton survived intimate partner violence — a pivotal event that profoundly shaped her life and practice. In the aftermath, she turned to abstract art as a means of healing. Through making, she discovered that the act of creating held the power to rebuild, repair, and reconnect her to herself.
What began as a journey of recovery has since evolved into a spiritual exploration. For Fullerton, the creative process is a space where fluid thoughts, emotions, and ideas take tangible form. She explains: “The process of artmaking inspires me and serves as both my spiritual practice and therapy. It allows me to recreate what I think about, experience, and feel.”
This exhibition showcases Fullerton’s abstract expressionist watercolours and collages, offering a glimpse into her creative process. For her, the act of making is as significant as the finished work. Together, they demonstrate how art becomes a vital tool for processing emotion and fostering personal transformation. Fullerton reflects: “Through my art, I hope to inspire others to trust their process, embrace uncertainty, and find their own path to self-discovery, healing, and change.”
Georgia Fullerton is a Jamaican Canadian visual artist, expressive arts therapy practitioner, and arts educator based in Ajax, Ontario. She studied visual arts at Red Deer College and earned a Bachelor of Arts from York University. She is a graduate of the CREATE Institute’s Expressive Arts Therapy program and is currently pursuing a Master of Arts in Theology in the field of Spiritualities and Community Engagement at Martin Luther University College.”
In collaboration with Ruckus Art Collective and Zene Magazine, we will be hosting a zine-making workshop for youth ages 16-29!
In this workshop, we will start with a brief introduction to zine history. Hayde from Zene Magazine will teach us the origins of zine-making and its importance both then and now. We will then delve into creating our own zines, with guidance from Ruckus Art Collective members. Let your creativity flow with us and even swap your creations at the end! Materials and refreshments provided. Beginner friendly.
Hayde Esmailzadeh, also known as Zadeh, is a ceramicist, sculpture artist, 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 spans material exploration and community-driven publishing.
Zene Magazine is an independent, artist-run publication dedicated to showcasing emerging talent and fresh perspectives across contemporary art, design, and culture. Founded and led by creatives, Zene centers community, experimentation, and accessibility—celebrating self-publishing as a powerful tool for storytelling, connection, and creative autonomy. Each issue captures a cross-section of the ideas, practices, and voices shaping today’s independent art scene locally and globally.
Ruckus Art Collective is an Oshawa-based group dedicated to supporting and uplifting the local art 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.
Inspired by current exhibitions,this workshop will explore themes of resistance, change-making, protest art, collaboration, community and the power of the collective.
