About the Artist – Annette Steele

I feel that art in all of its forms has the power to speak to the soul and create a human connection/.
I feel that visual art has the potential to draw you into the composition creating a bond on a mental, emotional, intellectual and/or spiritual level.

As an emerging visual artist,
I hope to create images that draw you into the beauty, the wonder and the spirit of 21st century Niagara life.
Having grown up in this part of Ontario and returning to it after ten years in Toronto I feel incredibly fortunate to have spent the last 30 years raising my family in Fonthill, one of Niagara’s many beautiful small-town communities.
I hope my images successfully celebrate the spirit of Fonthill’s small-town community life and its changing landscapes as well as Niagara’s changing former industrial identity to that of Ontario’s southern cultural playground with its cycling, hiking, culinary, golfing and water-sport attractions as well as its exciting and growing farm-to-table and wine, beer, and spirits craft-cultures.
This body of my artwork is titled
"Celebrating Niagara"

I also hope to create images that reflect our interior environments - our body,mind-and-soul journeyings.
I hope these images will have the power to capture our emotional and physical connectedness with ourselves, the environment and the people in our communities ...
... our when, why and how we gather ...
... or not ....
This body of my artwork is titled
"Journeyings"

Pablo Picasso once said "Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up."
As a child artist I spent all my free time creating images on paper of houses, of people and of spaces.
I too ‘grew up,’ and my journey as a ‘visual artist’ was interrupted, but fortunately -as pointed out by my daughter, Sarah- my life's journey has been full of passionate creativity and realized artistic visions (fashion as a creator and sewer, interior design as a renovator, a stager and a decorator, landscape architecture as a gardener and designer).

In keeping my dream of becoming a visual artist alive, I took numerous community and college courses/classes over the years, including watercolour, pottery, acrylic painting, block-printing, and faux-finishing.

So when, a few years ago, I was invited to join a group of aspiring artists (now known as Just Art & Co.) at the Fonthill Paddle Club, and they introduced me to the idea of applying stucco to the canvas before painting it,
I immediately took to it because having previously applied stucco to walls and furniture to create a desired effect; this ‘textured’ approach to a canvas spoke to me.
I have come to call this “texturalism”.

“Texturalism” involves the use of stucco, venetian plaster, etc., as your 'ground' and starting-point on canvas.

I realize I have been fortunate to have been on an ever-evolving journey of creativity, one filled with artistic form and purpose and I’m now excited to see where my “new yet returning” journey as ‘visual artist’ will lead.

Niagara has had a long and wonderful history of supporting area artists, and as a member of Niagara-on-the-Lake’s Pumphouse, Fonthill’s Just Art & Co, St. Catharines’ Rodman Hall and the St. Catharines Art Association (SCAA), as well as Welland’s Visual Artists of Welland (VAW) I have had the opportunity to meet and learn from some of the wonderful Niagara artists who offer their expertise and their passion.

I used to think my art journey was an interrupted one, but now I realize I have been on an ever-evolving journey of creativity and if I can borrow the words Vincent Van Gogh once wrote to his brother, Theo:

"I am seeking, I am striving, and I am in it with all my heart"
annette steele