Support emerging artists living with mental illness/substance use. Featured artists set and receive 100% of their sale price. An additional 15% has been added to this price to support the membership at Willow Arts Community.

EVENT DETAILS

Sarah Schulz is the artist behind Rising to the Depth and Detailed Renditions. Born and raised in the Niagara Region, she is primarily self-taught and has been an avid creator since childhood. Sarah officially started her professional career as an artist in 2013 through her business Detailed Renditions which concentrates on commissioned realistic portraits in coloured pencil. After a successful placement as an Artist in Residence through the Willow Arts Community, Sarah shifted her focus to personal exploration of themes surrounding mental health and recovery and began an additional arts practice called Rising to the Depth. (R2D). Sarah now works primarily with Acrylics and Mixed Media but continues to pursue dry media technique through daily art journaling – a very important part of her creative process and recovery.

Through her artwork Sarah strives to:

• Provide other individuals with lived experience visual proof that they are not alone;
• Extend to individuals without experience a visual depiction of some of what individuals struggling with mental health, trauma and dissociation are dealing with and,
• Foster connection, understanding and deepen compassion surrounding these often alienating experiences.

Sarah’s creative process integrates what she finds easy to create professionally (detail) with what can be difficult to demonstrate artistically (emotion). Her work can be found on social media @Rising2theDepth and @DetailedRenditions.

Lisa Forstinger is a self-taught artist, born and raised in the Niagara Region. She has been drawing and exploring her creativity since she was a child. Her focus as an adult has been illustrating with ink, balancing the many lines and details of her ink drawings with playful splashes of colour. Lisa has used her ability to draw and create things as a way to cope and heal along her mental health journey. These themes of mental health can be seen throughout her work, as she often processes difficult emotions by expressing them in some form of self-portrait. Lisa also has a passion for fibre arts, and is talented at knitting, sewing, and hand-embroidery. Her pen and ink illustrations were featured publicly for the first time in the Fall 2018 program for the Willow Arts Community. Since then, Lisa has continued to learn and grow as an artist through Willow’s professional arts training program. In the past few months, Lisa has adapted her artistic approach due to limitations in her battle with Lyme Disease. This unexpected process of evolution has proven significant to her growth as an artist. In pursuit of her passion, she has learned to replicate her style of hand illustrations in a digital, more accessible format and is now considering a career as a digital/graphic artist. To see more of her work, follow @lisa4stinger.art on Instagram.

Amanda Plante has lived in Thunder Bay her whole life and has moved here to St. Catharines very recently. Art has been a huge part of her life. After graduating from High school, she took multimedia production in hopes to be a 3D artist or a graphics designer, but found out sitting at a desk was not good for her mental health. Then went to school for culinary, and became a cake decorator/ baker. Baker by day, artist by night. Still new to the professional world of art, She have only recently had a piece featured at the piece of mind show displayed at the NAC. Before her move here in St. Catharines, she had pieces displayed and sold at a bakery called Sweet Escape back in Thunder Bay. She is both a traditional and digital painter, focusing on portraits and semi realism/ abstract realism. Her weapon of choice is between digital art and acrylics. Fascinated by the way we as humans display emotions through our bodies and features, Amanda portrays movement and emotion with paint. A simple stance or look can mean so much. Colour and figurism is something she always loves to explore on the canvas.