Isabel Fryszberg is an interdisciplinary artist (painter, singer songwriter, filmmaker and arts based occupational therapist). She advocates for the arts in healthcare, education and community, as well as having the arts accessible and equitable for all. Fryszberg studied visual arts at York University before she received her degree in Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy at the University of Toronto. She was the founder of Creative Works studio, an accessible and restorative community art program for adults with mental health issues which she ran for twenty years in South Riverdale, Toronto. Her years working with ‘untrained artists’ taught her much about visceral art making. She has since participated in several visual art residencies at Gibraltar Point Center for the Arts on Toronto Island and one in Borgo A Manzano in Tuscany, Italy. She has also taken courses at Toronto Art School. Over the last few years, she returned to her own painting practice and works out of a shared studio space at 401 Richmond.

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

Fryszberg draws much of her inspiration from her west end neighbourhood, Seaton Village. She is chasing the light, the beauty that provides respite and hope in a quickly changing city whether it’s found in a cafe, park, storefront, wild garden, or the trees around her. Like the novelist Henry Miller who wrote, “Paint what you like and die happy,” she finds solace from painting whatever she is emotionally connected to. She works in oils, watercolours and gouache. Often starting with a live plein air study to keep her work engaged in everyday life. She wants to archive and document through painting aspects of her local neighbourhood, nature and community that she fears will be lost or no longer accessible due to gentrification and the financialization of housing. She works on a variety of surfaces from arches, wood panel, canvas and mylar.