BETTY BROUWER

Using the creative process Betty Brouwer emotively responds to the world around her. She has always been drawn to textures, colours, stones, and art making. Early in her life, Betty was drawn to creating and gathering found natural objects. She would create something out of “treasures” she found around the house and outdoors. Alongside this creative spirit was an emerging ability to naturally connect and engage with children.

Although pursuing artistic studies was something she aspired to it did not always align with the practical messages she received from her immigrant family and community. Despite that, throughout her formal education, art was a component of it even if it was given a minor role. When Betty discovered Art Therapy in her undergraduate studies, she suddenly had a way to bring together two of her interests.

Collage has been an art form that Betty has used as a young person and into adulthood to help her process and give expression to the depths of emotions. Her current art echoes her early love for collage that has now expanded to include textile and found objects from everyday life. As with earlier collages and her clinical therapeutic practice Betty’s art explores the space between despair, trauma, loss, and resilience, strength, growth and hope as she seeks to respond intuitively to the world and the people around her.

 PETRA ZANTING

Petra has a graphic design and fashion illustration diploma from Fanshawe College, a BFA in Fine Art and an MA in Art Education from Concordia University in Montreal. Her career as a designer and art director was in print publications and newspaper design, with a particular interest in typography. More recently, her teaching career in painting, drawing and media design has perfectly complemented art-making. She has been exhibiting her paintings since 2004, and her current interests centre around environmental awareness, particularly vegetation and trees, contemporary artwork and art and spirituality.

 SANDRA ZUIDEMA

The patterns and skeletal structures found both in nature and architecture is the inspiration that drives Sandra’s work. Her medium is clay, wedged, thrown, carved and pierced just to the point it can stand before cracking. Pushing the structural limits of clay, she strives to make a substance as hard as a rock and sharp as glass feel weightless, as light as a leaf skeleton, as fluid as water, as fleeting as a flame. Sandra has her Art and Education degrees from Redeemer University, teaches Grade 5-8 art and is a full-time potter in Hamilton, ON.