When We Were
Dawn Owen
Revisiting one of the most enduring Canadian art histories, When We Were features the work of four Guelph-based artists – Scott Abbott, Janette Hayhoe, Jessica Masters, and Kathleen Schmalz – who transpose historical landscape tradition and plein-air technique in contemporary practice informed by their experiences and memories of places both within and beyond the local landscape.
For these artists, landscape is more conceptual and emotive than documentary, although each has engaged the technique of painting ‘in the open air,’ in view of the setting as it is rendered. While landscape implies that the land, as in terra firma, is their primary subject, in the context of When We Were it encompasses earth, water, and air, as well as the constructed and conjured spaces in-between.
Image detail: Scott Abbott, Quiet Reflection-Georgian Bay, 2012, oil on panel; Janette Hayhoe, Sky I, 2017, oil on Mylar; Jessica Masters, Patterns of Tide, 2017, dry pastel on BFK Rives paper dry mounted to Gator Board; Kathleen Schmalz, Back of Arthur Street #2, 2017, acrylic on canvas
Artists
Scott Abott
Janette Hayhoe
Jessica Masters
Kathleen Schmalz
View More Exhibitions
exhibition
September 18.2025 / January 4.2026
Challenging colonial conceptions of how Land and Water are used, valued, and protected, Reworldings speaks to living relationships with place and peoples, to the interdependence of species and systems, and to the urgent need to restore not only ecosystems, but justice.
exhibition
September 18.2025 / January 4.2026
Through practices that span net art, interactive sculpture, installation, video, and textile, Soft Internet Theory invites audiences to consider a gentler, more human digital future.
exhibition
May 22.2025 / August 29.2025
Fuzzy Thinking explores how textiles’ softness and tactility challenge boundaries between art and craft, weaving together historical and contemporary works rooted in material and cultural complexity.
exhibition
May 22.2025 / August 29.2025
Curated through an open call, artists from across Guelph were invited to share their work in a collective reflection of the city’s creative landscape.
exhibition
May 3.2025 / May 8.2025
exhibition
April 24.2025 / April 29.2025
Through photography, Bahar Enshaeian unravels the intricate layers of memory, identity, and belonging. Rooted in personal experience, her work speaks to the complexities of migration, displacement, and the search for home.
exhibition
April 10.2025 / April 15.2025
What utility can we find in vestiges of the past? This question shapes Hal Fortin’s interdisciplinary practice and its distinct sculptural language, punctuated by humour, dream logic, and the rhythms of domestic labour.
exhibition
April 2.2025 / April 6.2025
At the heart of Stephanie Fortin’s practice is an ethical inquiry: is it necessary—or responsible—to aestheticize waste in the context of global exploitation and climate change?
