Rebecca Last

About The Artist

Rebecca Last studied visual art, design and art history in Toronto, Italy and Vancouver earning a MA from University of Toronto and a BFA from York University. Since then she has focused on her art and design consulting work at her Toronto and Northumberland studios.

She was awarded a fellowship from The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and has worked as Artist in Residence at Banff Center for the Arts and at Hambidge Arts Center, Georgia, USA. She was one of two artists awarded funding by the Ministry of Culture to live as Artist in Residence at Nanjing N. University in China. There she painted and gave a series of themed lectures focusing on Western painting. As an art educator for over two decades at Sheridan College and has taught studio courses and lectured in Italy.

Rebecca Last’s studio, located on the edge of Rice Lake an ancient native spiritual site, is the place of her ongoing multi year study of the light and energy patterns that travel eastward across the lake. She exhibits regularly and works from her Toronto and Northumberland studios.

Her approach to painting combines a form of semi-automatism grounded in place, without photo reference but developed through memory and observation.

Rebecca Last has been widely exhibited; her most recent solo exhibition was at Edward Day Gallery in Toronto. Other shows include Gallery Moos Contemporary Programme’s group shows and “Road Show” in Montreal and was shown in “The Great Canadian Painting Exhibition” at the Arts and Letters Club in 2011, Toronto. In 2008 The Art Gallery of Northumberland mounted a solo exhibition of her paintings in the Paul Kane and Main Galleries called “Across the Lake: Studies in Light & Energy” in 2008. Other solo exhibitions include the Ontario Architects Association in 1995, First Canadian Place Gallery.

Last’s work has been featured on CBC and numerous publications including Canadian House & Home, Toronto Life, Style at Home, The Toronto Star, NOW, Southern Living, US and The Globe & Mail.

“The painter’s evolution from earlier, more literal representations, to fierce turbulent chaotic swings of nature offer viewers a rare portrait of a land whose every shift in mood and temperament are captured with the deft handling of the brush….By progressing towards the union of the visible natural world and the less visible cosmological plane, the artist confidently fuses grounded beauty of lake, sky and light while suspending our imaginary belief in all-encompassing ether that, as the world below, deserves our utmost awe and respect. ”  Edge of Chaos, The Paintings of Rebecca Last, by Kelly McCray

















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