Installation view of INTUITION at the Gladstone House, part of the hotel’s Fall/Winter Exhibits curated by Lee Petrie, Curator at Archive Hospitality. The exhibition includes work by five artists, all exploring the role of intuition in the artistic process. Artworks are exhibited in the lobby, staircase gallery and the 2nd floor lounge.

Opening Reception:
Thursday, September 25th, 6 to 8 pm
Remarks by the curator at 6:30 pm
Admission is free, all ages welcome

Location:
Gladstone House, 1214 Queen Street West, Toronto
Cash Bar. The Gladstone Cafe is open for food throughout the event.

RSVP for the celebratory reception is requested through Eventbrite: RSVP here

This is the culminating exhibition following my three-month artist residency at the Gladstone House in Fall 2024, during which most of these artworks were created.

From October to December 2024, I was selected to be one of three artists in residence who worked in the Art Studio on the lower level of the hotel. During the residency, I collected audio recordings from the local area (capturing traffic, nature, shopping trips, playground visits) and photographed local plants, flowers and tree shadows. I used software to create pixilated spectrograms from the audio recordings, which I then projected on to the panels to create loosely painted abstract patterns. After transferring drawings of the plants and tree shadows in layers, I finalized each composition with abstract lines and masses of colour to create what I like to think of as portraits of the landscape. A selection of six of these artworks are on view in the Intuition exhibition until January 13th, 2026.

Come see the work in person, and enjoy the rest of the exhibition by a group of stellar artists, many of whom have also participated in residencies at the hotel. Be sure to also visit the Art Studio on the lower level, where the current artists-in-residence will showcase their works-in-progress.

Participating Artists:
Daria Beer - collages celebrating women and nature
Julie Gladstone & Jeff Nye - abstract works rooted in memory and inner space
Sara Cristina Gonzalez - paintings shaped by memory, light & time
Ester Pugliese - mixed media exploring perception & experience

Current  Artists-in-Residence:
Carrie Chisolm
Laura Heaney
Caleb Sandblom

Intuition Exhibition at Gladstone House

High pressure system from the north continues to suppress rain chances
Acrylic, soft pastel, wax pastel and carbon pencil on birch panel
12 x 12 inches
2025
$480 CDN
INQUIRE

Featuring:
Audio recording: walking east from Gladstone Ave and up Northcote October 3, 2024
Flora: from cousin Emily’s wedding shower, April 2024
Tree shadows: Geary Avenue and Delaware Ave. N.

Mostly dry mid to late week with the exception of Thursday
Acrylic, soft pastel, wax pastel and carbon pencil on birch panel
4 x 4 inches
2024
$160
INQUIRE

Featuring:
Audio recording: track 7 from Italian Folk Songs album
Flora: from the Tree Museum in Gravenhurst, August 2024
Tree shadows: Geary Avenue and Delaware Ave. N.

Above normal temperatures Sunday through Wednesday
Acrylic, soft pastel, wax pastel and carbon pencil on birch panel
12 x 12 inches
2025
$480 CDN
INQUIRE

Featuring:
Audio recording: walking east from Gladstone Ave and up Northcote October 3, 2024
Audio recording: Kids playing on Henry Moore Sculpture (#2) at Grange Park, Oct 11, 2024
Flora: from the corner house at Geary Avenue and Delaware Ave. N, August 2024
Tree shadows: Geary Avenue and Delaware Ave. N.

With partly cloudy skies, highs in the mid 80s
Acrylic, soft pastel, wax pastel and carbon pencil on birch panel
16 x 18 inches
2025
$680 CDN
INQUIRE

Featuring:
Audio recording: walking east from Gladstone Ave and up Northcote October 3, 2024
Flora: from cousin Emily’s wedding shower, April 2024
Tree shadows: Geary Avenue and Delaware Ave. N.

Drier conditions prevail with clouds lingering overnight
Acrylic, soft pastel, wax pastel and carbon pencil on birch panel
4 x 4 inches
2024
$160 CDN
INQUIRE

Featuring:
Audio recording: track 7 from Italian Folk Songs album
Flora: from the Tree Museum in Gravenhurst, August 2024
Tree shadows: Geary Avenue and Delaware Ave. N.

Scattered showers and thunderstorms are possible Saturday afternoon
Acrylic, soft pastel, wax pastel and carbon pencil on birch panel
12 x 12 inches
2025
$480
INQUIRE

Featuring:
Audio recording: walking east from Gladstone Ave and up Northcote October 3, 2024
Audio recording: Kids playing on Henry Moore Sculpture (#2) at Grange Park, Oct 11, 2024
Flora: from the corner house at Geary Avenue and Delaware Ave. N, August 2024
Tree shadows: Geary Avenue and Delaware Ave. N.

Overnight temperatures will remain above freezing (redbud)
Acrylic, soft pastel, wax pastel and carbon pencil on birch panel
20 x 20 inches
2023
$800 CDN
INQUIRE

Channeling diverse influences ranging from endangered species and cut flower arrangements, to children’s amusements and Italian folk music, Pugliese‘s new mixed media paintings capture the fleeting quality of life. By suffusing abstracted swathes of colour with carefully drawn details and a coral reef aesthetic, the works ask viewers to untangle dense layers and find relationships in seemingly disparate imagery. Geometric shapes resembling building blocks threaten to swallow carefully rendered details of plants, suggesting their likely demise through the agency of human progress. However, rather than obliterating the natural living things, these geometric shapes appear to be replicating themselves – learning how to grow alongside the natural world.

Measured Calm explores the relationship between the enjoyment evoked by the sensuous depiction of a subject and a conflicting moral message, a concept inspired by the still life, or “vanitas”, paintings of the Netherlands in the 16th and 17th centuries. This is akin to the artist’s breathless lust when she enters a flower shop and imagines composing an arrangement drawn from the exquisite living things contained within. With such an assortment of blooms – common, rare and possibly endangered – she must contain her desire to have them all. It seems that in today’s world, when we scrutinize our base, often materialistic, urges we inevitably confront our morals.

Photo documentation by Brian Burnett.

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View Press Release from Loop Gallery exhibition.

View Press Release from Gallery 555 exhibition.

The mixed media works in Disfluency and Delay consider the human inclination to adjust outward appearances, illustrating this tendency with contrasting examples from nature. Each work presents audio graphs of impromptu performances culled from YouTube videos, layered with audio spectrograms of natural events (glacial collisions, ice fractures, earthquakes), sculptural forms implying air movement, and charted output and capacity data from Ontario’s wind farms. 

Disfluency and Delay was exhibited at Loop Gallery, Toronto, April 27 – May 19, 2013.

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The mixed media works in False Relations and Fractions offer up an arrangement of incongruous image pairings and split second variations that layer cultural references, natural elements and imagined realities. Roofs of Toronto houses open up to reveal ephemeral hierarchies; output graphs from Ontario’s wind power facilities intertwine with musical notation spectrograms of Italian madrigals; and groupings of fragile objects invite closer inspection.

False Relations and Fractions was exhibited at Loop Gallery, Toronto, September 1 – 23, 2012.

Photo documentation by Brian Burnett.

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Empirical Spaces is a series of mixed media paintings/drawings, which outline architectural / theatrical spaces and observations of the built and natural world, using sound and hearing as points of reference. The works identify spaces in which sounds resonate readily. The underlying abstract forms in these works are like internal organic structures. The outlines that float above the abstract ground are representations of Italian theatres, opera houses and church layouts. The layers present a challenge to the eye to perform in a way similar to the way our ears can discern a chosen sound amidst a din. Constructing a mental picture of each outline engages one’s short term visual memory.

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Photo documentation by Brian Burnett.

hush is an exhibition of paintings made of paint, charcoal, flocking and metal-based drawing materials, which focuses on resonance and the conduction of sound. The exhibition posits the concept that objects have a fixed natural frequency at which they will resonate in sympathy with an external sound, to a potentially destructive level. The works identify objects that are good resonators (buildings, bones, cilia) and others that serve to damp sounds and echoes by absorbing them (furniture, clothing, soft tissue).

The sooty underlying forms in these darkly layered paintings are like imaginary bone structures, organs, arteries and blood vessels illuminated with iodine for an x-ray image. The layered lines and shapes present a challenge to the eye to perform in a way similar to the way our ears can discern a chosen sound amidst a din. Constructing a mental picture of each tangled outline engages one’s short term visual memory.

hush was exhibited at AWOL Gallery, Toronto, September 11-21, 2008

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