The Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition is a yearly event I try to check out every year. I'm not sure how long it's been going on, but it's become quite a popular event. For a lot of artists who participate, these three days may be more lucrative than the rest of the year. Competition gets tougher every year though, so there's no guarantee an artist will get in, even if they're a regular.

Anyway, on to some of the artists I liked (and who had cards and/or websites to remember them by.)

Jennifer Harrison [TOAE] - thick, nearly sculptural paintings of row houses and buildings - almost like paintings made of cake icing. Can be rather hypnotic looking at a lot of her stuff all at once.

Stephanie Ford Forrester [TOAE] - I'm not usually too into crafts, but she had some pretty amazing hand quilting work.

Dave Trautrimas [TOAE] - bizarre stuff. Very "entertaining" work to look at, containing lots of visual puns. It was fun looking at his stuff trying to "reverse-engineer" them and figure out how he comes up with his ideas.

Bonnie King [TOAE] - I love this girl's compositions. How much "white"space can you have in a painting and still make it work? Great technique with the brush as well. Suburban (as opposed to urban) landscapes seem to becoming more and more acceptable and common these days.

Lisa Crouch [TOAE] - Had a lot of recognizable downtown Toronto locations. A master of the "red underpainting" technique.

John Ovcacik [TOAE] - Just about everyone I talked to immediately made the Christopher Pratt and Alex Colville connection. Still, no-one really owns the geometric, smooth-shaded painting style; there's enough room for more players in this area, and he does it well.

Peter Rotter (Flash needed) [TOAE] - Incredible design, very skilled painter. Unfortunately the large scale and subtlties of his brushwork and colour variations don't really come through in the photos. Always a big hit and likely did very well at this show.

Bonnie Brooks [TOAE] - Her transparent watercolour work was very pretty eye candy. No more web links I could find unfortunately.

Chris Langstroth [TOAE] - He might be my favourite of the bunch this year. I saw his work last year at the Annex Patio Art show and was pretty amazed by his control of paint colour and texture, using large palette-knives and rulers to apply and scratch paint to and from his large canvas surfaces. Incredible stuff.

Spent much of the weekend hanging out at my friend Dave Marshak's booth [TOAE]. He, with his longtime painter associates and friends of ours, are heading up to the arctic on another art trip in August. I'm also planning a painting getaway or two at his schoolhouse in Collingwood this summer (no, CBB & littlestar aren't the only ones living in a converted schoolhouse in the country!)