Dorchester Square in downtown Montreal. © Tourisme Montréal.
Our neighbors to the north provide the world with abundant opportunities to admire and revel in the arts. With major cities across the country, such as Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, as well as Calgary and Edmonton (both in Alberta), Canada is both a haven of the outdoors and the urban.
Take Montreal in Quebec, for instance, where French is the city’s official language with around 50 percent of the population speaking it. With institutions like Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Galerie Bloom, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and La Guilde specializing in Inuit and First Nations art, located right across the street, the major metropolitan city is brimming with culture.
Nearby is Toronto in the Ontario province. In addition to arts institutions like Art Gallery of Toronto and the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto, the city holds ArtFest Toronto every year. While this year’s normally lively in-person event was modified to be a virtual affair, running September 4 to 7, Artfest Toronto still featured fantastic artwork from dozens of Canadian artists.
Clear across the other side of the country, just north of Seattle, the city of Vancouver is another top art destination. The city houses places like the Contemporary Art Gallery, a nonprofit public art space, and the Vancouver Art Gallery, which highlights historic and contemporary art of British Columbia.
Many talented artists call the Great White North home. Just a few of the individuals out there today moving and shaking the art scene include Nathalie Lapointe, who walks the line between urban cityscapes and fantastical realms, and hyperrealist painter Sheryl Luxenburg. Gossamer Gallery in Wabamun, Alberta, represents the work of more than 40 local artists from the Edmonton region, including Tammy Taylor. Also, located in Stony Plain, Alberta, is LJL Galleries, featuring fine contemporary artwork including paintings and sculpture.
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Cindy Sorley-Keichinger
PO Box 382, Kitscoty, AB, T0B 2P0
(780) 847-2294
goldfarm@telusplanet.net
www.goldenkstudio.com
Represented by Picture This Gallery, 959 Ordze Road, Sherwood Park, AB, T8A 4L7
www.picturethisgallery.com
Cindy Sorley-Keichinger, of Golden K Studio, grew up on a farm in East Central Alberta. Family vacations were always at national parks embarking on lots of trail hiking, with field guides in hand to learn all about the environment. There was no such thing as walking in ignorance of our fellow inhabitants of the planet, the artist explains. Naturally, that led to wanting to draw and paint nature. A self-taught artist, she lives on a grain farm with her husband and their now expanded family that includes grandchildren. With the encouragement of her husband, she continues to paint what she loves.
The interior of Picture This Gallery in Alberta, Canada.
Cindy Sorley-Keichinger, Contested, acrylic, 24 x 18"
Cindy Sorley-Keichinger, Autumn Snooze, acrylic, 11 x 14"
Sorley-Keichinger works in acrylic, gouache and recently oil, enjoying the punch she gets with the colors. When doing her paintings, she likes to research the animal and area in order to properly portray the creature and its environment. Wildlife is her favorite subject followed by landscapes, as there is never a dull moment with this ever-changing subject matter. Sorley-Keichinger is a member of several guilds: Fellow of the American Artists Professional League, Signature member of NOAPS and Artists for Conservation, and an associate of both the Women Artists of the West and Society of Animal Artists. Sorley-Keichinger’s work was also featured in the 2020 Artists For Conservation show in Vancouver, British Columbia, this fall. She is represented by Picture This Gallery in Alberta.
Picture This Gallery hosts several events throughout the year, the premiere event being the Masterpieces in Miniature Show hosted every May. This invitational art show features artists of stature from across North America and other parts of the world.
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Nathalie Lapointe
info@nlapointe.com
www.nlapointe.com
Painter Nathalie Lapointe lives in the Lanaudière region of Quebec, Canada. As a young girl, she explored watercolor, eventually moving into oil painting. Training in fine arts led her to find ways to render her subjects in a language that is specific to her, a gesture that is expressed sometimes in the line of urban universes, sometimes in fantastic universes, creating cities grafted onto cliffs or working in the semiabstract of imaginary cities. Lapointe’s work denotes this duality of mind that opposes the Cartesian side and the need to let go. 
Clockwise from top left: Nathalie Lapointe, Inception, oil, 24 x 24"; Little story of warmth in blue, oil, 60 x 30"; Cité Libre, oil, 16 x 16"
She has participated in international solo and group exhibitions and has won numerous awards throughout her career. Lapointe is represented by Brights Gallery in Ontario, and several Beauchamp galleries including atelier b in Québec, Galerie d’art Beauchamp in Baie St-Paul and Montreal, and Beauchamp Art Gallery in Toronto.
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Sheryl Luxenburg
www.sherylluxenburg.com
Born and raised in Montreal, Quebec, Sheryl Luxenburg received two graduate degrees in clinical psychology and spent two decades working as a clinical psychologist. She specialized in family systems and trauma and worked as an expert witness in trauma and sexual abuse cases for the court system. After being diagnosed with an autoimmune illness, she decided to leave the profession. In the previous decades, she had always explored her passion for painting and attended art school at Concordia University, Keene State College and Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, formerly known as The Banff Centre.
Sheryl Luxenburg, To Everything There Is A Season (triptych), acrylic on linen underpainting, charcoal and pastel, with panels on Fredrix Belgian linen canvas, 72 x 36" (each panel)
In order to celebrate a milestone birthday, she decided to paint a triptych, each panel 6 by 3 feet, called To Everything There Is A Season. The monumental work is dedicated to her husband, who has been a major support to her. The project is about survivorship, transformational growth, recovery and healing. It is a celebration of overcoming life-threatening illness, and most importantly, about raising awareness for the #MeToo and the Time’s Up movements. The three billboards on the cement wall represents the past and the central figure standing life-size represents survivorship.
Luxenburg’s style and techniques are closely associated with photorealism and hyperrealism. She is most known for creating a flattened depiction of space, as opposed to typical realism in which there is 360-degree contouring and shading. In a flattened depiction of space, the contouring ends more abruptly at 180 degrees with lighter values toward the rear. The artist’s work revolves around people or objects that experience some type of distress, such as confusion, dread, conflict, anger or numbness. Emotions related to feeling overwhelmed, useless or abandoned also play prominent roles within her compositions. She describes her figures interacting with water as an expression of a fatigued emotional state. Luxenburg says she had an epiphany about 20 years ago when she realized that her subject matter was a direct projection of the psychological struggles she was having in her life.
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LJL Galleries
3001 43 Avenue #101A, Stony Plain, AB T7Z 0H4
(833) 501-2020, sales@ljlgalleries.com
www.ljlgalleries.com 
An exterior photo of LJL Galleries in Stony Plain, Alberta. Photo by Carlee Marie Pilla.
LJL Galleries features fine art, fashion and design by top contemporary artists “making a difference through social, cultural and environmental projects.” LJL Galleries offers a niche selection of fine art, ranging from sculptures to impactful original paintings. Collectors are sure to find something that will ignite their senses from a variety of noteworthy artists including Erté, Picasso and Dalì (pieces from a private collection are now for sale). The gallery has recently added Miami-based artist Frank Chinea Inguanzo to its
roster. While there are currently no exhibitions scheduled due to COVID-19, LJL Galleries’ virtual gallery is under construction and will be available by this November.
LJL Galleries, Mystery Horse, recycled plastic bags on canvas, 48 x 36", by Lisa Levasseur.
LJL Galleries, Mirando La Vida, oil on canvas, 60 x 60", by Frank Chinea Inguanzo.
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Gossamer Gallery
5215 51st Avenue
Wabamun, AB T0E 2K0
(780) 892-2169
gallerylady@thegossamergallery.com
www.thegossamergallery.com
Tammy Taylor
(780) 967-3981
tammytaylor.artist@gmail.com
www.tammytaylor.ca
The Gossamer Gallery, owned and operated by Lois and Len Hannam, opened five years ago as a dream to bring art out of the city to the rural setting. The gallery represents the artistic expression and work of more than 40 local artists and artisans from the Edmonton, Alberta, region. This encompasses painters of all mediums and genres, photographers, pencil artists, sculptors, carvers, potters, metal workers, glass workers, fabric artists, wood craftsmen and jewelry makers. “Lois the Gallerist” has an eye for displaying the varied works in the gallery. She is a storyteller, telling stories with art. 
The exterior walls of Gossamer Gallery are filled with murals. Photo by Angela Specht.
A man views artwork inside Gossamer Gallery. Photo by Angela Specht.
Throughout the year, Gossamer Gallery presents solo and group exhibitions. Wildlife artist Tammy Taylor, who captures light and texture to create lifelike images that are rich in color, depth and emotion, will be featured early in 2021. The gallery is also planning to showcase the exhibitions online on the soon-to-be revamped website to facilitate showcasing the artists and online sales. —
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