Nikol Drouin: Norther Lights

Nikol Drouin was raised in Ottawa, Canada. She is a graduate of York University's School of Fine Arts, where she notably worked with master printmakers Eugenio Tellez and Antonio Frasconi. After art school, she settled in Montreal to teach and paint. An interest in Latin cultures led her to travel through Latin America-Mexico, Peru, Chile, Brazil-where she discovered a style of image-making which had a strong impact on her own, figurative, metaphorical, and colorful. Nikol has created murals and exhibited her paintings in Toronto, Montreal, New York City and Cuba. 

"Making images, drawing lines and spreading color on empty surfaces, the craft of painting, is as vital to me as breathing and loving. It is a means by which I can tap into emotions, in my own heart or in that of the world around me, in order to retrieve them and lend them meaning through beauty, a semblance of spiritual order. I paint people mainly, but as quasi mythological figures in elemental settings-water, air, fire earth. Objects of the real world are reinvented in visual metaphors for mountains, cities, forests and oceans. The colors are bright in my mind's eye: I wish them ever brighter and bolder, inspired by Hendrix and Bjork, soundmakers of raw emotion." 

The opening reception will feature soundtrack by composer/musician Denis Ferland, founding member of Montreal rock group SAS-31.