Creatively Thinking With Carolyn B

         I discovered this genius in high school, or was it somewhere in the collective consciousness that I saw his melting clocks? I’m not certain, but I know when I found this eclectically strange human with his peculiar moustache, his Spanish background, I was hooked. At the time I was getting into the band The Doors, and Aldous Huxley’s Doors of Perception, Brave New World, and The Perennial Philosophy. 

         It was an electric time of innovation and industry that was buzzing and thriving with creativity during a very traumatic political period.  Let’s take a deep dive on these Arti...

          Exploring Art for 50+ years has proven to Anne MaClear that painting will always have it's challenges, and new ways of seeing. MaClear looks to find unexplored avenues to go down that provide new opportunities. Having the educational framework in her bones of numerous classes ranging from pastels, oil stick, embroidery, encaustic, wax, oil, and textile to name a few. 

     From her admiration of fellow Artists Mark Rothko and Robert Motherwell - two pioneers from the Modernist art movement; more specifically Pop, and Abstract Expressionism.  MaClear punctuates her practice with flourishes from these two Artists. So subtly and pervasivel...

How did I fall into this obsession? It really was an accident, something I never intended. When I studied Art in high school there were so many artists that fascinated me. Mainly from the modern art movement. I remembered Andy Warhol's soup cans and silkscreens; but  they weren't anything special.

It wasn't until much later that I realized we had similarities that went beyond any artistic technique or style. My family was in no way similar to Mr Warhola's religious upbringing - far from it. My family is very British. What we shared is a little horrific. 

         Beverley Daniels Part 2 goes deeper into discussing how she has explored and developed her technique as a multi-disciplinary artist. In the last decade she has been focusing on dissecting and combining found objects. Allowing them to share the space almost that can sometimes result in an argument, they are separated until they can sit comfortably together.

         This is the area that Daniels loves to be involved in. It's the energy, the movement, the discussion between the mediums, how they relate, how they speak to each other to say what cannot be said. It becomes more than what it appears...

Beverley Daniels is a multi-disciplinary Artist that found her passion light up when she finds materials while going about her day in Toronto, Canada. Finding them incidentally, and rather intrusively, she is given these nuanced prints as brightly coloured advertisements; and stumbles onto interesting finds that people put outside their homes to give away. 

Being intrigued to discover and combine these objects into woven and fused plastics, Using materials destined for landfills: ribbons, lawn signs, scrap vinyl upholstery, old film. Cutting, weaving, and gluing or fusing them. This was originally an Ecological anxiety, now Daniels prefers them. I...

This was going to be one of the most exciting times in my life. I had decided this before I even stepped inside the building. I was about to embark on my post-secondary education at a school where the Group of Seven had gone. Those god-like Painters of our glorious nation known as Canada. This is my essay to you, declaring my profound experience of being an Abstract painter and how it led me to become an Artist interviewer. To want to go behind the scenes, undercover, into the inner circle of the imagination.

What really touched...

Having such a curious and inventive mind Libby Hague has been a prolific Toronto based Artist specializing in video and large scale print installations. She has taught printmaking at Sheridan College, and is known for her paper collage and constructed installations; that deal with disaster, hope and the precariousness of consequence. Understanding the resilience and fragility of paper Libby knows this is why it is the perfect medium for expression.

Born in St Thomas Ontario, and growing up in Montreal, Quebec;  Libby has been creating sculptures and stories of contradiction, violence, love, death, disease, and vulnerability. Moving f...

Having such a curious and inventive mind Libby Hague has been a prolific Toronto based Artist specializing in video and large scale print installations. She has taught printmaking at Sheridan College, and is known for her paper collage and constructed installations; that deal with disaster, hope and the precariousness of consequence. Understanding the resilience and fragility of paper Libby knows this is why it is the perfect medium for expression.

Growing up in St Thomas Ontario  Libby has been creating sculptures and stories of contradiction, violence, love, death, disease, and vulnerability. Moving freely amongst these narratives has g...

Leaves of Canada is a uniquely original project that documents and celebrates the Canadian landscape using images inspired by Canada's national treasures and botanical wonders. Dilan Doty the Artist that created this genius idea of bringing together knowledge from her degree in Architecture, and her love of nature to share her passion for this awe inspiring space we share. 

Dilan goes on road trips to gather her material, her sketches, and studies of how our world is transforming before us; into beautiful arrangements of complex leaves, rocks, water and trees. They begin to translate for us into a...

Andrea Berger an award winning Canadian landscape and floral painter, has been able to capture some stunning moments across our Southern Ontario landscape. With deep colours, tones and exquisite textures she has discovered the quiet within and loves to share her discoveries.

Challenging herself recently with Plein Air painting and confining herself to 20 minutes has heightened her awareness, piquing her interest, and her attunement with nature and the wonder in everyday spaces. Peeling back the layers to reveal something unexpected. Knowing every journey is unique to each Artist, Berger keeps exploring interiors and cityscapes.

Searching...

As a Korean Canadian Artist Christine Kim lives and works as an Artist and Arts Educator North of Toronto. Drawing her entire life, she crystalizes her digital and analogue modes of operation into intricate gestures. Understanding the stars as narratives, weaved on threads by storytellers throughout the years. Christine traces the lines from these structures, collects these stars; while inventing her own imaginary constellations and narratives in paper portraiture. 

Examining the surface, shape and volume of concealing and revealing the figure; Kim incorporates the interplay of layers and shadows. While the viewer is shown glimpses of calmness, f...

Exploring her Jamaican roots this multi-disciplinary Artist Georgia Fullerton will astound you in all the unique roles she intersects. Inhabiting and traveling through many positions and perspectives as a visual communicator; Georgia is actively encouraging creativity in a wide range of community members. From women's groups, homeless shelters, youth group, to long term care facilities and local school districts. Enhancing creativity, is also part of the healing journey

Being involved in multiple community groups, art therapy, writing, movement, drama - all ways to encourage creativity in community members. Georgia is sensitive to the relationships and emotions that...

Join Carolyn Botelho in the second part of her interview with Noe Kuremoto. Symbolism and ancient stories from her Japanese background, Noe admits to abandoning when she was younger. Now through her experiences in life she recognizes them as real totems, or talismans to help guide us during life's difficult and challenging moments. 

Creating a life for herself and her family in London, UK. Noe has found the opportunity to build a studio in Lithuania in a national forest. Understanding her roots have mostly been surrounded by urban luxuries. The challenges piqued her interests to focus in o...

Establishing himself as an interdisciplinary Artist Blake studies the Canadian landscape in a way that would surprise you. He uses what he sees in the rocks, the trees, the water, and everything around him, to create another image. One that contains multiple pictures that broaden the imagination of everyone that comes into contact with them.

These prints, paintings, photos become a tool that when displayed in shops, galleries, and ultimately individuals homes create a dialogue. Guests and family members discuss what they see, how they see it and all that it conjures up. They become stories in...

Speaking with Toronto based Abstract Expressionist Artist Gwen Tooth we take a deep dive into her practice on how she assimilates her travels into techniques in her toolbox; how staying with teachers too long can change your creativity in ways you didn't expect, and how she never thought art school was for her - when ultimately she went later on to three different institutions. 

Join Carolyn Botelho as she discusses with Gwen where her influences in Art really came from, how textiles, printmaking, and even playing a variety of instruments played a part. When does she decide t...

Exploring the culture of construction Artist Julia Campisi reworks and rewrites how we see things in our everyday world. Primarily being known for her collage work Julia shines a new light on overlooked objects and gives them a new identity. One that reveals itself in unique ways. Orchestrating her interdisciplinary skills to new depths using design, photography, collage and sculpture to create a new narrative on our built culture of self and why we exist.

With a background in photography from Concordia University, Toronto Metropolitan University, and Mcmaster for Political Science. Campisi reshapes our ascribed environments and...

Coming from Lebanese roots O'hara Kamis has a uniquely original perspective, and she loves every minute of it.  Especially her groovy lifestyle that she has created over the years on various landscapes she has called home. Using her love of research and detail she throws herself into every new medium she encounters, from shoes to jewelry, to phone cases and apparel. There really is no limits she sees to her creative capacity

O'hara has a vibrant fun loving personality that shines through her work. Creating captivating bold pieces that resonate with her community. Being a self taught C...

Growing up with Artists around her home in Japan Noe absorbed the artist lifestyle of gathering meaning, understanding the objects and relationships have a larger context. She learned early how to become an academic artist. How to use classic materials. She gained the education of Contextual Art at St Martin's College in the United Kingdom. Switching gears into motherhood she returned to basic mediums of earth, air, and fire she found in clay.

Listening to her personal cues and the gossip in the big cities Kuremoto heard the unease of the working class. Taking solace in her...

Hunting down driftwood is what Artist Damian Agostini describes himself as doing. When asked what he does he says he wakes up and he goes out and plays. He gets up really early, eager to make his whimsical sculptures of animals and furniture. Made entirely from objects and pieces of wood like driftwood he finds along the lakeshore in Toronto or in Trinidad, his other home.

Sharing some candid moments of how the public reacted when the city of Toronto asked him to move his sculptures from the Humber Bay shores. The reaction of the public was...

Exposed to both American and Canadian landscapes has enriched Erica Hawkes' creative practice in unique ways. Following the flowing hills and rugged coastlines of the west coast has inspired her to create masterful compositions that have combined two distinct styles into one  perspective.

Being able to blend and merge the techniques of the Group of Sevens' impressionistic style and the dynamic energies and colours found in the early modernist ideals of Art Nouveau. Erica creates a sense of magic with her Artwork. Explore these new perspectives that she transcribes to us with a sense of painterly inquiry t...

Growing up with Artists around her home in Japan Noe absorbed the artist lifestyle of gathering meaning, understanding the objects and relationships have a larger context. She learned early how to become an academic artist. How to use classic materials. She gained the education of Contextual Art at St Martin's College in the United Kingdom. Switching gears into motherhood she returned to basic mediums of earth, air, and fire found in clay.

Listening to her personal cues and the gossip in the big cities Kuremoto heard the unease of the work life. Taking solace in her family...

Creating psychological spaces that transcend reality using found objects, fabrics, and basically trash Emily Zou wanders amongst the myriad of mental and physical constructs that litter our landscapes. Both physical and emotionally Emily shares her mental health struggles. How they shape how she lives, and draw the energy within her to reshape what we throw away, she gives a new life.

Zou labored these thrown away items not simply by a straight trajectory at school. But rather a labor of anxious anxiety she found during the dark days of the COVID Pandemic. Where many...

Being a Canadian Landscape Painter Marie Neys has been fueled by the West Coast and the rolling hills of Alberta. She admits to finding her practical side and her creative side have a unique balancing act going on. One that pulls her every time she needs to be creative. She has an urgency to create in her studio. One that she has transformed into a professional and prodigious space of teaching.

Incorporating her passion for the outdoors into her love of studying mediums; Marie challenges herself constantly to achieve a beautiful moment in time. She has always...

Searching out the quiet spaces is what Lori Ryersons' photography is all about. Being a Fine Art Photographer, opportunistic Photographer, or whatever passes by her aperture she says candidly. Lori looks for the obscure and hard to find quiet. Places that are increasingly hard to find in Canada's biggest city Toronto; where she calls home is incredibly noisy. Finding these quiet places is often where humans are not.

When she manipulates, and distorts, using various tools that the camera has at it's disposal, Lori is able to create a myriad of images that the average person would...

Bev Morgan hunts down the vision and excitement she feels when the light flows through her explorations. She is primarily a watercolour Artist finding innovation in nature, on an adventure, or painting en plein air. Bev's passion for teaching resonates with her students because she instills her passion for Art appreciation.

She encourages and enjoys the opportunity to inspire others to pick up a paintbrush. Developing over 100 lesson plans in a variety of mediums Morgan shares her enthusiasm for travel with her fellow tourists  to excite and motivate their imagination into new ways of constructing their inner v...

Hugh Gardner joins our show from a unique vantage point. Perched on top of the musical peak of being a Saxaphone player, a Visual Artist, and being involved with the theatre scene in Eastern Ontario. This gives him a rhythmic, visual, and dramatic advantage. 

Join me as we take a deep dive in understanding what got him to this very point in his career creatively. Was it the love of music that put him in this direction? Was it working with his hands? Or expressing himself impromptu on stage that was the key to moving him in t...

Describing her background as Scottish bagpipes and high tea Laura Beaton's creative practice fuses distinctly Asian cultural styles with her Canadian heritage to create an authenticity that is uniquely her own.

Join me as we take a deep dive on where Laura found her initial inspiration, how it has transformed over the years, and what continues to motivate her creative practice. This combination of techniques and painting skills has an intense structure rooted in perfectionism. 

How has Laura found her trajectory in the Art World? Has her distinguished skills resonated locally and in China? How h...

Join me as we take a deep dive with an Artist who is said to be breaking all the rules of colour. Yaw Tony an Architect, Artist, and Graphic Designer that also has an extensive fashion line. What are his boundaries with colour? Does he have any? What inspires these rich and wild designs of intricate and bizarre stories? They are flooded with intensity of pure hues and symbolism. 

Yaw Tony has a unique perspective with these three disciplines he weaves his own interpretation of contemporary values with his cultural heritage that shines brighter and bigger. We g...

Carol Walthers knew how she felt about colour and form, before she ventured into education on the matter. Her views didn't change much over the years. Only her yearning to create more and more subjects that gave her the creative spark to be dissected and made whole again within her creative practice.

Join me as we uncover her imagination and how it guides her.  What was her initial inspiration to take this path as an Artist? What changed when she went from Graphic Arts to Visual Arts? Her ideas come flooding into her mind on environmental issues, d...

Painting thousands of paintings, having public artworks involved in Hollywood productions, and being a frequent lecturer are just a few of the tools Sutherland has used over his three decades of being a Professional Artist in the Toronto area. 

Being a prolific Artist is whats his creative practice has become. Kirk Sutherland doesn't know it any other way. It is a meditative state of flow. As an experienced Colourist and Abstract painter, that has for many years seen things differently with Synesthesia. Where he craves colours in the middle of the night because he tastes them with h...

Being a Canadian new media Artist means Kezleigh's creative process is always changing, and forever floating.   Her unique form of expression sits ready to fly from the layers of inspiration she cuts and molds into works of paneled plastic forms flowing like textured depth.

How did her imagination arrive at this creative place? Join me as we uncover her drives, her motivation, and what exactly inspires these forms to emerge? Was it her design experience? Or her education? Life growing up in Muskoka, central Ontario? Or did these experiences weave to influence her practice?

Expressing h...

David Brown is an alchemist, from the humblest sense of the word. He uses the furnace of  the imagination to create a quiet loudness from encapsulating some of Canada's urban centres into sensory illusions of time and space.

Having an award winning international career in Design and Art for 30+ years Brown graduated fom Ontario College of Art and Design University.  His encaustic paintings of crisp edged abstractions of translucent conscious thoughts, resonate with engineering exactness and childlike amusement. 

Join me as we take a deep dive on how these found objects, paired with these paintings, bec...

Being a self taught Artist Lynden Cowan meticulously creates wild landscapes with highly detailed scenes. Finding solitary amusement as a child Lynden used scrap wood as canvas; making her own paints from dandelions, berries and vegetables. By the grace of teachers gifting her supplies - as kitchen pots were no longer suitable, her talent blossomed. 

Growing up in Brampton, Cowan returned to painting during a time of family sorrow. Fashioning her style after her memories of Nova Scotia where she was born, maturing every Summer by spending it with her Grandmother in a rural atmosphere.  This idyllic se...

Edward Moffat a decidedly unique photographer on the local scene. Describes his work as not for everyone, as nearly naked often disturbs the mainstream in ways that are peculiar. He connects with his models and has an understanding. It is what is comfortable to expose, to share, to divulge to the eye. 

Being a freelance photographer has had its ups and downs but Moffat has found a niche with his love for capturing nature both in the human body and the outdoors. Specifically he is fascinated with unusual perceptions, cropping techniques and layering negatives.

Join m...

Callie Gray gravitates her creativity into bursts of joyous abstractions rich in energy and spontaneity to make your heart sing. She is an award winning international Artist that has found a spiritual connection in Art that transcends experience into a unique understanding of the world around her.

Join me as we take a deep dive into her creative process, her inspirations, her insights, and what triggers her into finding her innovative sense of style. Is it her mindfullness or her fascination? What is it in the act of creating that truly motivates her?

Originally from...

On today's show we have the multidisciplinary Graphic Designer, Photographer and Artist Gordon Moss. With years of experience Moss shares with us what inspired him down this path. How does his love of music play a part in his creativity? Has he found a platform for the two fields to balance each other? How has he seen Graphic Design change over the years? What made him decide to develop his creativity into more of an Artistic stream rather then the Design path in more recent years? 

Join me as we go beneath the surface of Moss's creativity a...

With us on today's Podcast is James Flux a local Artist who claims to be madly in love with the creative spirit. He was involved with the Night and Day Studios, then a director for Beaux Arts Brampton, and now has found his footing in both Vortex paintings, street Art, and scripting thoughts precariously around the city and social media. We will take a deep dive into how this came about shortly.

But first lets  go underneath the fabric of his creativity to find what got him here in the first place. Join me as we discuss h...

Being a Graphic Designer has been an exploratory career for this Creative Professional. Graeme has been a director of a Toronto Art Gallery for over a decade, and has now found his footing internationationally in Mexico. What led him to bringing his innovative business south of the border?

In this podcast we dive deep to discover what is behind the fabric of his creative practice. What drives him, what made him choose this direction in the first place? Join me as we uncover what influenced his style to use reclaimed materials? What does working with Artists really...

Speaking with Toronto based Abstract Expressionist Artist Gwen Tooth we take a deep dive into her practice on how she assimilates her travels into techniques in her toolbox; how staying with teachers too long can change your creativity in ways you didn't expect, and how she never thought art school was for her - when ultimately she went later on to three different institutions. 

Join Carolyn Botelho as she discusses with Gwen where her influences in Art really came from, how textiles, printmaking, and even playing a variety of instruments played a part. When does she decide t...

Speaking with Toronto based Expressionist Artist Gwen Tooth we take a deep dive into her practice on how she assimilates her travels into techniques in her toolbox; how staying with teachers too long can change your creativity in ways you didn't expect, and how she never thought art school was for her - when ultimately she went later on to three different institutions. 

Join Carolyn Botelho as she discusses with Gwen where her influences in Art really came from, how textiles, printmaking, and even playing a variety of instruments played a part. When does she decide the p...

Join Carolyn Botelho as she takes a deep dive with her first Artist on inspiration, perspectives, and what it takes to be truly authentic.  What being true to yourself means; why she likes people not liking her art, and the challenges of finding spaces to show her creativity.

Talking with artistic professionals like Claudia Dorey is a real enlightening process because they have allowed me to see thru the windows into their creative process that can go unnoticed or unrecognized; when they can be  essential. We need to nourish our innovation. These are gifts that need to be...