ABOUT
Jess Fife — Artist Statement
Jess Fife is a Toronto-based painter exploring perception, embodiment, memory, and access through landscapes, nature, and cityscapes. Her work emerges from the unstable space between confinement and return, and the urgency of seeing, feeling, and creating while the body allows it.
Periods of severe illness have left Fife unable to leave her bed or enter the world outside. Memories, photographs, and plans for where she would go when she was able became ways of holding onto that world and imagining her return. Over years, she built a personal archive of landscapes, plants, light, colour, and moments of beauty gathered whenever she could be out in the world. The photographs document what was there; the paintings explore what remains.
Through heightened colour, expressive brushwork, thick paint, abstraction, movement, and emotionally charged light, Fife transforms these fragments of lived experience into vivid records of beauty, longing, travel, and escape. Painting allows her to inhabit them again when illness confines her—to transform what she has seen, remembered, and longed for into something tangible.
Her work is both an act of defiance and a love letter to the world: collecting it when she can access it, returning to it when she cannot, and sharing its beauty as a form of escape, connection, and survival.
Paintings
"Birch" — Acrylic on Canvas, 8 × 10 in., 2026, Private Collection
"Forest Wander" — Acrylic on Canvas, 8 × 10 in., 2026, Private Collection
"Oak" — Acrylic on Canvas, 8 × 10 in., 2026, Private Collection
"Pine" — Acrylic on Canvas, 8 × 10 in., 2026, Private Collection
"Sunset on Lake" — Acrylic on Canvas, 36 × 32 in., 2026, Private Collection
"Mountain" — Acrylic on Canvas, 14 × 11 in., 2026, Private Collection
"Ember Tide" — Acrylic on Canvas, 4 × 4 in., 2026
"Velvet Glow" — Acrylic on Canvas, 4 × 4 in., 2026
"Between Tides" — Acrylic on Canvas, 4 × 4 in., 2026
"Afterglow" — Acrylic on Canvas, 4 × 4 in., 2026
"Last Light" — Acrylic on Canvas, 4 × 4 in., 2026
"Poppies" — Acrylic on Canvas, 18 × 24 in., 2026, Private Collection
"Poppies 2" — Acrylic on Canvas, 18 × 24 in., 2026, Private Collection
"Roses" — Acrylic on Canvas, 11 × 14 in., 2026, Private Collection
"Cosmos" — Acrylic on Canvas, 16 × 20 in., 2026, Private Collection
"Barcelona Awaken" — Digital Oil on Digital Canvas, 30 × 36 in., 2025, Private Collection
"Hope Mill" — Digital Oil on Digital Canvas, 32 × 34 in., 2025, Private Collection
CV
Selected Group Exhibitions
2026 - All the Small Things - Northern Contemporary Gallery - Toronto, ON
2026 - The Pink Show - Northern Contemporary Gallery - Toronto, ON
2025 – Daily Devotions Virtual Exhibition - New York, NY
Education
Landscape Painting
2026 - Canadian Impressionism - Emily Joyce - Toronto School of Art - Toronto, ON
2026 - Painting Trees & Forests - Leila Refahi - Toronto School of Art - Toronto, ON
2026 - Plein Air at Evergreen Brick Works - Emily Joyce - Toronto School of Art - Toronto, ON
2026 - Painting Impressionism: Monet to the Group of Seven - Emily Joyce - Toronto School of Art - Toronto, ON
2026 - Spotlight: Painting Seasonal Landscapes - Leila Refahi - Toronto School of Art - Toronto, ON
2026 - Creative Landscape Painting - Leila Refahi - Toronto School of Art - Toronto, ON
2025 - Painting Fall Landscape - Leila Refahi - Toronto School of Art - Toronto, ON
Floral Painting
2026 - Expressive Floral Painting: Movement & Energy - Leila Refahi - Toronto School of Art - Toronto, ON
2025 - Painting: Floral Styles Through History - Leila Refahi - Toronto School of Art - Toronto, ON
Urban, Light & Atmospheric Painting
2026 - Painting Sunsets & Nocturnes - Leila Refahi - Toronto School of Art - Toronto, ON
2026 - Painting: Urban Landscapes 1 - Brian Harvey - Toronto School of Art - Toronto, ON
Contemporary & Experimental Painting
2026 - Painting: Contemporary Strategies - Andy Fabo - Toronto School of Art - Toronto, ON
2026 - Acrylic Studio Lab - Leila Refahi - Toronto School of Art - Toronto, ON
2025 - Painting: Experimental Contemporary - Martha Eleen - Toronto School of Art - Toronto, ON
Painting Foundations, Technique & Skill Development
2026 - Brushwork & Mark Making - Brian Harvey - Toronto School of Art - Toronto, ON
2026 - Observational Painting Foundations - Brian Harvey - Toronto School of Art - Toronto, ON
2025 - Painting for Beginners - Kyla Brown - Toronto School of Art - Toronto, ON
Drawing & Illustration
2026 - Illustration Essentials - Karen Justl - Toronto School of Art - Toronto, ON
2026 - Introduction to Life Drawing - Thomas Hendry - Toronto School of Art - Toronto, ON
2025 - Drawing 1 & 2 - Martha Eleen - Toronto School of Art - Toronto, ON
2025 - Illustration Essentials - Karen Justl - Toronto School of Art - Toronto, ON
2025 - Making Monsters - Enzo Avolio - Toronto School of Art - Toronto, ON
Ceramics
2026 - Ceramics: Throwing & Handbuilding - Jon Packer - Toronto School of Art - Toronto, ON
2026 - Ceramic Foundations - Jon Packer - Toronto School of Art - Toronto, ON
Artist Development Program
2025 - Visionary Artist Master Program - Kristy Gordon - Kristy Gordon Fine Art - New York, NY
University & Continuing Education
2013 - Media Studies and Art & Design Continuing Education Courses - OCAD University - Toronto, ON
2013 - Digital Marketing Certificate - University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies - Toronto, ON
2012 - Honours Bachelor of Arts: English Literature & Political Science, Minor in Gen. Humanities - McGill University - Montreal, QC
Reach out:
I’m so glad you’re here. For inquiries about available work, exhibitions, collaborations, or other opportunities, please get in touch using the form below.
I look forward to hearing from you.