Volume 5, number 6, Winter issue 2015 / 2016 Date of issue: December, 2015

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1 CONTRIBUTORS LARRY ARNAL Photographer Larry Arnal, who has been photographing interiors and architectural projects throughout North America for more than 20 years, turned his lens on two spectacular homes for this issue. One, an Edwardian-era house in Rosedale, was renovated to be a neutral backdrop to the homeowners extensive art collection. The other, a new build in Kleinberg, was designed to be a family home with an extraordinary interior design. ROSE BARROSO Custom home builder Rose Barroso is passionate about her work in the building trade, and she also enjoys sharing her knowledge and expertise. For this issue, Toronto Home drew on Rose s knowhow as a builder of luxury contemporary homes in a question-and-answer feature about exterior cladding on houses and how to choose the right ones. Volume 5, number 6, Winter issue 2015 / 2016 Date of issue: December, St. Ambroise St. Suite #367 Montreal, Qc. h4c 2c7 EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Stephanie Whittaker PUBLISHER Leah Lipkowitz ASSISTANT TO THE PUBLISHER Hana Rakovski Call sales@ CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER Jennifer Mula KATHRYN GREENAWAY Kathryn Greenaway danced professionally for 11 years before stepping away from the stage to study journalism. She s been a critic, feature writer and news reporter for the past 25 years and is a regular contributor to Toronto Home magazine. Kathryn says she learned an important lesson while writing for this issue about the main-floor transformation of a Mississauga home: Think twice before you move, she says. Elegant changes by skilled workers can make you fall in love with your old home all over again. SUZANNE WINTROB Writer Suzanne Wintrob admits that she can t draw a straight line, but that didn t stop her from starting painting classes last month. Instantly, she says, her world exploded with colour. Skies are bluer, trees are greener and I think in words such as cadmium yellow and Alizarin crimson, she says. So Suzanne jumped at the opportunity to profile two artists for this issue: German rug designer Jürgen Dahlmanns and Toronto abstract painter Janna Watson. Suzanne also writes for Financial Post and Financial Post Magazine. ART DIRECTOR Mark Ruzayk ASSOCIATE EDITOR Phillipa Rispin PRODUCTION ARTIST Marieve Gagnon EDITORIAL COORDINATOR Wendy Loper ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANTS Diane Dollisen Carmen Lefebvre CONTRIBUTORS Julie Gedeon Kathryn Greenaway Sarah B. Hood Susan Kelly Susan Semenak Suzanne Wintrob PHOTOGRAPHY Larry Arnal Brandon Barré Stephani Buchman Gillian Jackson STYLISTS William MacDonald Lisa Maida Heather Segreti Vanessa Suppa CHIEF STRATEGIST Sheila Toby PRODUCTION DIRECTOR Tova Zajdel ACCOUNTING Joseph Tsang SALES DIRECTOR Hazel Rapanan LEGAL DEPOSIT issn x Toronto Home Magazine Inc All rights reserved. Any copying or reproduction of content without the written permission of Toronto Home Magazine is strictly prohibited. Printed in Canada 20 THE WINTER ISSUE

2 Art ABSTRACTION ATTRACTION Artist Janna Watson paints large, colourful abstract works BY SUZANNE WINTROB artist profile Art Winter 2015 / 2016 As a child growing up in Flesherton, Ont. (population: 700), Janna Watson loved hanging out with her grandfather. Arthur Bonnet owned a Toronto flower shop and he taught industrial design at a local college. But his real passions were drawing, abstract painting and rug-hooking. His sense of colour was otherworldly, says Watson. She was fascinated watching him paint and delighted whenever he offered her lessons. 124

3 Art toronto winter 2015 / 2016 Satisfying Dream Life, mixed media on panel with resin, 60 X 48 in.,

4 Art Weightless Time, mixed media on panel with resin, 48 X 48 in., 2015 artist profile Art Winter 2015 / 2016 One summer, he gave me a mission to go out into the forest and make an abstract drawing of a tree, recalls Watson. When I came back to show it to him, he criticized my work by telling me it was okay but that I needed to become more wild with my drawing. I think I was only 12 when I got this critique, but I have never forgotten the artistic freedom he passed on to me in that moment. Bonnet died in 1999 but his legacy lives on in his granddaughter. Today, Watson is an accomplished abstract artist with a Toronto studio and she co-owns a rug company called Watson Soule that produces visually expressive floor pieces (think cool art on the floor). Her work is shown at Bau-Xi Gallery in Toronto and Vancouver, Foster White Gallery in Seattle, and Galleri Couture in Stockholm. Paintings range from 24-by-24 inches ($1,700) to 60-by-60 inches ($7,400). Watson s big break came while she was studying art at Toronto s OCAD University and working part-time as a waitress at the Soho Metropolitan Hotel. She was living with a friend s parents at the time and they were enamoured with a six-by-four-foot painting she had made for class. They wanted to buy it. She 126

5 Art toronto winter 2015 / 2016 Smuggler's Cove, mixed media on panel with resin, 48 X 48 in., 2015 The Opera Singer, mixed media on panel with resin, 48 X 36 in., 2015 thought $800 sounded like a decent price. They snatched it up, which boosted her confidence. Next, the hotel s property manager asked if she would display her pieces in the hotel s lobby. She painted every free moment over the next six weeks and produced six large works. Several were sold and the hotel commissioned Watson to paint more. Then, while serving coffee to some hotel guests, she overheard an edgy-looking woman tell her colleagues that money is energy. It was enough to prompt the budding artist to quit her job and focus on her craft. She s been making a living at it ever since. Watson s medium of choice is acrylic mixed with gouache on birchwood, and she evokes feelings using colour and negative space. The wood tends to suck the pigments in, creating a flatness, she explains. But my final touch is a coating of resin, which pulls and pops the colours back to life. Not that they were ever dead, but the resin creates that wetness of the initial paint. When I play with colour, it is a strategy to mix, kill the colours, but bring them back to life. For example, when I mix a Chinese red with a peacock blue, you get a dark blackish sludgy brown colour. 127

6 Art I'm not sure I can even paint a realistic tree anymore. I should try! But mix that with titanium white it s resurrection. It s just incredible what comes up. When I paint, I thrive on the unexpected and build my compositions this way. Watson is now busy preparing for a new show in February at Bau-Xi's Vancouver gallery, titled There s No Dimmer. It features large, bold works. As always, she hopes they ll sell well. I don't eat if the art doesn't sell and I am not interested in not eating, she quips. Some painters like to suffer. I'm not one of them! Watson says she gravitated to abstract art because she finds it confining to work from sketches and photos. Like her beloved grandfather, she likes to be in the moment. He taught me to be an abstract painter by looking at a tree and finding the essence of it and forgetting about the exact way it looks, she says. I'm not sure I can even paint a realistic tree anymore. I should try! artist profile Art Winter 2015 / 2016 Janna Watson s work will be exhibited from Feb. 13 to 27, 2016 at Bau-Xi Gallery, 3045 Granville St., Vancouver. An opening reception will take place on Saturday Feb. 13 from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Bau-Xi Gallery

7 Art toronto winter 2015 / 2016 Doves Under the Window, mixed media on panel with resin, 36 X 48 in., 2015 TorontoHome-Winter2015/16-Final2.indd :26 PM