Toni Cormier
Artist in Residence: June 1 - June 30, 2026
ABOUT TONI CORMIER’S RESIDENCY
Toni’s practice explores the interconnected relationships between living beings and their environments, using visual narratives drawn from nature to reflect experiences of agency, kinship, power, loss, desire, and hopeful futures. During her residency, Toni spent time moving through KOAC’s aspen forests and surrounding landscapes and meltwater systems, studying how light reveals, obscures, reflects, and refracts across water, plants, insects, animals, and human interactions.
Through daily walks, observational studies, en plein air sketches, and experiments in charcoal, graphite, watercolour, and painting, Toni developed a body of research rooted in direct encounter with the land. These studies evolved into a new series of intimate oil paintings created from time spent building relationship with place.
Artist Biography
Toni Cormier is a visual artist based in Mohkinstis (Calgary, Alberta). Working primarily in painting and sculpture, she explores relationships and social power dynamics through the metaphor of sport fishing. Scenes of play, deception, absurdity, and social roles happen over a backdrop of dream-like landscapes. Cormier graduated with distinction from the Alberta University of the Arts with a Bachelor of Fine Arts with disctinction in Drawing. She exhibited at Herringer Kiss Gallery in Surface, Surface and participated in BUMP’s 2025 Road Works Festival. Calgary Arts Development has generously supported her. Cormier maintains an active role in the Mohkinstis arts community as an artist and arts programmer, including her current position at National accessArts Centre as the 2D Painting/Drawing Faculty.
Find out more about Toni Cormier at tonicormier.com
