Sandra Manzi

Sandra Manzi is a Canadian artist from Toronto currently residing in Hamilton. She makes paintings which explore the timeless themes within the various genres in the history of painting, inviting the viewer to contemplate our understated everyday moments within the grand narratives of the past. She is a graduate from the Ontario College of Art and Design (OCADU) where she received her diploma in Fine Arts/Experimental Arts, and received a B.A. in Fine Arts from the University of Guelph. She is a recipient of grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Toronto Arts Council, and is a two-time finalist for the Boynes Artist Award. Her paintings can be found in private collections throughout Canada, Europe, and the United States.

ARTIST STATEMENT

As a figurative painter my main interest lies in exploring visual storytelling, and my goal is to create contemplative paintings which make us consider our present time in relation with that of our past. My inspiration comes from the canon of Art History, film, and the mundane moments of my daily life, where disparate scenes are juxtaposed or layered to form larger narratives that invite the viewers personal interpretation and to provoke reflection. 

As a figurative artist, I’m fascinated by watching people and capturing fleeting moments which speak of bigger questions of what it means to be human. I layer images to express how transient and ephemeral experiences can be. I will combine two or three of these moments together as a way of connecting them to replicate my memories of that time and as a metaphor to how memories fade and blend together. This way of painting also allows me to work within the genre of Realism while also transcending it by creating compositions that embody fragments of a reality made up of different moments and places. My latest body of work is inspired by the Old Masters. By blending parts of Old Master works and other elements from the canon of art history with people from my own time, I wish to spark a dialogue between past and present; fact and fiction; tradition and technology. I especially like to compare the simple moments in life with the grand narratives of our past.