Colour Theory: An Anti-Racism Art Exhibit

Robyn Jin (she//her)

Robyn Jin is a Korean Canadian artist from Vancouver Island who is currently living on traditional Lekwungen Territory. Robyn’s main subject matter depicts her journey with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and currently works with oil paint and ceramic mediums. 

After studying Art Therapy, she began finding great comfort in expressing vulnerability and woundedness in her creations. Through rehearsed abandon, Robyn began challenging her inherent fastidiousness by warping forms, abandoning borders, expressing imperfections, and shattering perfectionism. She frequently pulls colours and textures from the forests of Vancouver Island as anchor elements of comfort and nurture. Robyn’s display of pain and loneliness in her work is soft in hope that her message can be met with empathy and plasticity. Her work is an invitation to others to find community in their darkness.

Jade Anais (she/they)

Jade Anais is a self taught stained glass artist. Her drive to create comes from a place of deep intrigue and from a thirst for knowledge in what she has yet to learn. Jade seeks to sample all that the world has to offer and let the sights, tastes, and smells drive their artistic endeavors. Nature has held Jade along their journey to find kinship in the world and has been the largest purveyor of inspiration for their art.

Glass as a medium has given Jade the therapeutic tools to take life more slowly, and the ability to reflect deeper into a painful history without the majority of the hurt previously associated with it.

Kristy Crawford (she/her)

Crawford is a Haida artist from the Eagle K'aawaas Clan of Kiusta, Haida Gwaii, B.C. Born and raised in Masset, she was exposed to art throughout her life in many different ways, and she has a passion for learning new things.

This lead her to the Freda Diesing School of Fine Arts in 2009, where she learned how to draw, paint, and carve northwest coast art under the instruction of Stan Bevan, Ken McNeil, and Dempsey Bob. Kristy completed her certificate in 2010, then took time off to raise her daughter. Later, she then completed her diploma in 2014.

She is now continuing her studies of Haida Art, learning from her mentor and husband James Crawford, whom she met in Art school. She currently resides in Victoria, B.C., working as a full time artist, raising her two children. She produces many different types of art including carving, painting, lino block printing, silk screen printing, photography, video production, knitting, and crocheting.

Leting Cai

Leting Cai is a Chinese artist who is currently studying Visual Arts at the University of Victoria on the traditional lands of the Lekwungen and W̱SÁNEĆ Peoples. Cai is originally from Shanghai, China, and she has lived in Victoria since 2015. Cai is a sculptor and a conceptual artist. She believes that Arts will always find a way to make a difference to the world because every form of Arts is a vessel for human civilization and it constantly rolls forward.

Cai is familiar with needle felting, crocheting, weaving, and welding. She is very devoted to material innovations. For the past two years, Cai has been focusing on challenging the stereotypical relationship between domestic craft and institutional arts as a reflection on the mistreatments of feminine art in the male dominated art world.

Laura Rechwan (she/her)

Laura Rechwan is a Lebanese-Canadian artist who believes in the transformative power of creativity. She was born in Windsor, Ontario and grew up on Vancouver Island, BC, where there are abundant sources of inspiration from the natural world. Play and experimentation are key to Rechwan’s artistic process and she often incorporates repurposed materials.

She holds a Visual Arts Diploma with honours from Camosun College (2015), studied Studio Art and Art History at Concordia University in Montreal (2017-2018), and received a Bachelor of 

Commerce Degree in Entrepreneurial Management from Royal Roads University (2020). 

Rechwan loves public speaking and has delivered presentations alongside work displayed at the Sooke Fine Arts Show, Open Space’s Vertical Gallery, the Coast Collective Art Centre, and other events. Rechwan loves to exhibit her own artwork, collaborate with other artists, and is highly active in the local community as an arts ambassador. Learn more at www.rechwan.com.

Macayla Yan (any pronouns)

Macayla is a settler of Cantonese ancestry currently residing on the Homelands of the Lək̓ʷəŋən Nation.

They were born on W̱SÁNEĆ Homelands, though their family comes from the tropical 台山, 中山, 澳門, and 香港. As such, Macayla is deeply indebted to the stewards of this land in ways that they cannot adequately put into words.

Macayla is an emerging textile artist, counsellor-in-training (August 2021 completion), workshop facilitator, advocate, and community member.

As an artist, Macayla practices embroidery, crochet, knitting, weaving, and bookbinding. Macayla’s art helps them connect to their ancestors. They are also a chronically ill, queer, and nonbinary person with thin, citizenship, housing, and educational privilege.

Everything Macayla does is grounded with the belief in the necessity and power of individual, collective, and ancestral healing and liberation.

Mara G Szyp (she/her)

Mara is an Argentinean-Canadian artist. She specializes in Seascapes and textured abstracts. Her artworks have been selling internationally since 2017.

“When I am birthing a new art piece, it expresses who I was while morphing into who I will become”.

Mara currently resides in Sooke, BC on the southern tip of Vancouver Island, Canada on the traditional unceded WSÁNEĆ territory.

Mara started painting after her second unrelated cancer. She creates art because it gives her a purpose. And a tool to express everything she is feeling and thinking.

She puts all of herself in each art piece she births. She is a very intuitive artist, and her senses are always open to perceive the world around her and that’s something you can see through her art.

The artist has an unusual sensitivity, an empath some say. Events affect her deeply, overwhelming her senses at times.

Matilde Cervantes Navarrete (she/her)

Matilde is a Mestizo woman who was born in the Peninsula of California, México. She draws on a strong background in psychology, with a focus on health within mental, social, and environmental domains. She is an international researcher, and her research interests are mental health, arts-based research, arts-based interventions, and intergenerational approaches. She aims to conduct research about the linkages of art and health with Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists with an ecofeminist lens.

Matilde’s artwork includes conceptual pieces, installations, multidisciplinary productions and visual storytelling. As a newcomer and a cis-gender queer woman of colour, Matilde values diversity and multiculturalism. She has extensive experience working with complexity and multiple perspectives. She believes in art for social change, and she aims to contribute to the social justice, equity, diversity and inclusion conversations in the community. She believes in art as a valuable tool to evoke social change in creative and collaborative ways.

Dahlila Charlie (she/her)

I am a Coast Salish artist from Victoria, BC. I grew up surrounded by artistic and creative people which has inspired me to become an artist myself. I draw from stories, myths and cultural teachings.

I incorporate Coast Salish formline with nature and realism in acrylic paint, my preferred medium. Painting has always been a passion of mine.

I learned how to paint in high school and then worked on murals in Victoria. I continue learning from mentors and teaching myself techniques. Through my artwork I connect to my roots as an Indigenous woman.

I use art to share my thoughts, ideas, and to evolve as an artist.

Rowan Hynds

“Boozhoo, Rowan indizhnikaaz. Anishinaabe miinwaa Irish indinawemaganag nindonjibaamin, ma’ingan nindodem.

Hello, my name is Rowan. My ancestry is Anishinaabe and Irish, my clan is wolf.”

Rowan is a Two-Spirited multidisciplinary artist who was born on Lekwungen and W̱SÁNEĆ territory, where they still reside as a guest today. Much of Rowan’s work as an artist is an expression of healing: all the messy, painful, celebratory and restorative parts of it. In exploring the complicated nature of identity through their art, they strive to create that which is honest and authentic to their own. Rowan believes that the relationship of mutual vulnerability between artist and audience lends an incredible capacity to foster solidarity. Her ultimate endeavour is to understand herself, the world around her, and to be understood in return. Whether in inks, acrylics, verse or melody, Rowan can be found at their most Human when engaged in some form of storytelling.

Neil Bourne (He/Him)

29 year old, born in London, England of Guyanese ancestry with heritage from Africa, India and China. 

My art is as much of a mash up of themes and abstract concepts as I am of different cultures and ethnicities. 

My current work is my attempt to express a united left and right brain, past and future, masculine and feminine.

I work mostly with digital media, however I also like to paint with acrylics, have started learning tattooing and am also a certified sea kayak guide.