Today on the Artalogue, one of my favourite Canadian painters, Janna Watson, chats with me about her art career, being Queer and taking inspiration from nature. Janna Watson is a Toronto-based abstract painter whose paintings use colour, drag marks, contrast, and negative space to reframe spirituality as something embodied, flexible, and alive. She also intentionally avoids borders, letting the edges stay vulnerable and infinite.

We start with her earliest memories of art, shaped by two artist grandparents and a formative critique from her grandfather: “it needs to be wilder.” From there, Watson breaks down how intuition is built through repetition and risk, why “mistakes” often become the strongest moments in a painting, and how she sees herself in collaboration with her tools. We also talk about influences she returns to, what she chooses to collect at home, and how nature, especially the sky, becomes her favourite form of inspiration in abstraction because it changes constantly and belongs to all of us.

Because this conversation lands during Pride month, Watson shares her experience as a Queer artist raised in a Pentecostal church, including the being outed, and how finding queer community in Toronto expanded her sense of self, God, and possibility. She explains what it means to “queer the painting process” through working on the floor, building compositions with multiple orientations. We close with career highlights, discuss sobriety, her new book “Layers of Self,” and practical advice for emerging painters who want a sustainable studio practice. We also have a really great discussion about complicating the Canadian canon!

If this resonates, subscribe, share the episode with an artist friend, and leave a review so more people can find these stories of art, identity, and creative freedom.

Connect with the Artalogue:

Madison Beale, Host

Be a guest on The Artalogue Podcast

Happy Pride! It's episode 2 of the Artalogue's Pride Programming, speaking with 2SLGBTQ+ voices in Canada's art world. Today on the Artalogue, Madison Beale chats with Jake Kimble, a contemporary Dënesųłıné photographer based in Vancouver, who was recently highlighted by CBC Arts as an artist to watch! originally from Treaty 8 Territory in the North West Territories. Kimble's work moves between photography, performance, and material experimentation with a clear goal: make authenticity visible without sanding down its edges.

Kimble shares their path from acting to a visual art practice shaped by breath, the body, and the idea that “life is a performance.” He shares how growing up across the Northwest Territories and other parts of Canada taught him to value freedom, privacy, and the specific places that hold memory, which now informs where he shoots the Canadian landscape in his practice. We talk about what changed through training as an artist when honest feedback pushed him away from edgy, disingenuous work that wasn't representative of their true self, and toward a self-portraiture practice that can make sense of sexuality, love, pain, and humour all at once. Kimble also explores what their two-spirit identity means to them in their life and art practice, and how breaking down normative ideas of gender have become central to their work.

From there, we discuss some highlights in Kimble's over so far, such as the beaded tears that slowly obscure his face in It’s All So Incredibly Loud and the cheeky brilliance of printing photographs on paper towels for the Pick It Up Quick series. We also talk about the East and West coast art scenes from both the artist side and the gallery side, career highs, burnout, and the self-care practices that make long careers possible.

If this conversation sparks something in you, subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave a review.

Connect with the Artalogue:

Madison Beale, Host

Be a guest on The Artalogue Podcast

Grief makes people uncomfortable, and that discomfort shapes what we’re allowed to say, show, and share. Today, Madison sits down with Toronto based visual artist, writer, and educator Michèle Pearson Clarke to talk about what happens when you allow yourself move with grief, rather than simply allowing it to move through or past you.

Clarke walks us through an auto-ethnographic practice rooted in the longing and losses of Brown and Black queer people, and how her practice as an artist took shape later in life. Growing up in Trinidad, she didn’t imagine herself as an artist, but volunteering at the Inside Out LGBT Film and Video Festival cracked open a new definition of who gets to make work. We talk about coming to Canada at 19, what it means to become “Capital B” Black in a Canadian context, and how social work and psychology trained her to navigate vulnerability, boundaries, and the structural forces that shape personal pain.

We also have a frank discussion about some relevant topics this Pride, from Queer curating to relationship culture, while discussing some works in Clarke's oeuvre. We discuss why gay divorce can feel so abstract and so unspeakable in our community that fought so hard for marriage equality, and how Clarke articulates more nuanced Queer experience in her work.

Clarke shares how she thinks about the limits and strengths of the still image versus video, why repetition matters, and how she wants viewers to feel something, not just “get it.” Plus, we dig into her time as Toronto’s photo laureate during the pandemic, her work on queer curating, and the realities of balancing teaching with an art practice, including creative blocks and rebuilding confidence.

If you are interested in contemporary Canadian photography, video art, 2SLGBTQ+ artists, Black Canadian art, and the creative possibilities inside grief, listen to this episode and join in the conversation. Subscribe, share with a friend, and leave a review with the line that stayed with you most.

Connect with the Artalogue:

Madison Beale, Host

Be a guest on The Artalogue Podcast