Biography

Joanna Strong's paintings explore connections between materiality and meaning. Still life objects are seen as metaphorical lanterns, illuminating our experiences and embodying states of mind.

Using found objects, as well as creating her own forms from combinations of materials, each artwork is a distillation of experience, using paint to illuminate complexity and the intangible. 

Joanna has been exploring this painting project for many years, interweaving it with the complexity of personal experience. Currently based in Toronto, Strong grew up in St. John's, Newfoundland. She holds a BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art & Design in Halifax and an MFA from the University of Waterloo.

Selected Exhibitions

2022 Entanglement, Leslie Grove Gallery, Toronto, Ontario
2022 Constellations, Art Gallery of Burlington, Burlington, Ontario 2022 Toronto Outdoor Art Fair, Toronto, Ontario

2020 Carmichael Canadian Landscape Exhibition: Tradition Transformed, Orillia Museum of Art and History, Orillia, Ontario
2020 Annual Juried Exhibition, Latcham Art Centre, Stouffville, Ontario
2020 Vital Signs, Leslie Grove Gallery, Toronto, Ontario
2019 Birds Adapted for Flight or Fancy, Seaton Gallery, Burlington, Ontario
2018 Carmichael Canadian Landscape Exhibition: Tradition Transformed, Orillia Museum of Art and History, Orillia, Ontario
2018 Framed by Feminists, Gladstone Hotel, Toronto
2018 The Liveness in Me, Hashtag Gallery, Toronto
2018 Latcham Gallery Annual Juried Exhibition, Stouffville, Ontario
2018 Under the Sun, First Canadian Place, Toronto
2018 The New Normal, Beaux Arts Brampton, Brampton, Ontario
2018 First Things First, Beaux Arts Des Ameriques, Montreal
2018 VAM 40, Art Gallery of Missisaugua, Mississauga, Ontario
2018 Miniature Landscapes, Cedar Ridge Studio Gallery, Scarborough, Ontario
2017 Why the @#& Do You Paint?: All the Colours, Gladstone Hotel, Toronto
2017 Collective 20, Gallery 1313, Toronto
2017 Underpinnings: Celebrating 130 Years of NSCAD Alumni, Anna Leonowens Gallery, Halifax
2017 The Brain Project, Toronto
2017 Nouns: Person, Place, Thing, Earls Court Gallery, Hamilton, Ontario
2017 Salon of Inclusiveness III, Black Cat Gallery, Toronto
2010 The Collective: 12 days of Art and Ideas, Triangle Gallery, Toronto
2009 Play, Cube Gallery, Ottawa
2009 Elastic, Campbell House Museum, solo exhibition and Nuit Blanche event, Toronto
2009 Do It At the Gladstone, Gladstone Hotel, Toronto
2008 Wet Paint, Christina Parker Gallery, St. John’s, Newfoundland
2007 Entanglement, solo exhibition, Hang Man Gallery, Toronto
2007 Juxtaposition, solo exhibition at Zilberschmuck Gallery Toronto
2006 Feminine Persuasion, Latitude 44 Gallery, Toronto
2004 That Obscure Object of Desire, Cambridge Galleries, Cambridge, Ontario
2000 Urban Painters, Edward Day Gallery, Kingston, Ontario
2000 Art & Healing, John B. Aird Gallery, Toronto
2000 Flourish, solo exhibition at Cambridge Galleries

“Joanna remakes the flotsam of rubber bands into meaningful forms. In her paintings, the bands are brightly coloured paths of light wound into planet-like spheres, hanging in a black void. Each rubber-band ball can be seen as a kind of mandala, representing the universe; as a small world emerging from darkness; or as accumulations of interactions that make up the rhythm of our days and nights.”

Liz Driver, Curator
Campbell House Museum, Toronto

“Joanna Strong has chosen to paint, ever so carefully, the modest subject of a ball of elastic bands. In a nod to the memento mori tradition of still-life painting, her subject is both beautiful – there is a wide range of colours and bits of text on the elastic bands – and transitory – elastic bands only last so long before they stretch and lose their usefulness. The outsized ball of elastic floats in a dark void that partially envelops the ball, lending it the quality of a planet floating in the cosmos. Compositionally, Strong has recreated the structure of a mandala, a circle within a square, underlining her transcendental staging of what would otherwise be a simple picture of the thrifty habit of keeping elastic bands in one handy spot.”

Jurors’ remarks (John Armstrong, Faizal Anwar, Jayne Wilkinson)
VAM40, Art Gallery of Mississauga