Florence Wyle and Frances Loring

Sculptors Florence Wyle and Frances Loring met as art students in Chicago and moved to Toronto in 1913. Nicknamed ‘the Girls,’ the two were a couple and worked in a studio together. Many of their works can be seen in parks and galleries in Toronto and across Canada. One of their large commissions came after the First World War, when they created a series of works to represent life on the Homefront. 

Wyle and Loring pushed for recognition of sculpture as an art. They were founding members of the Sculptors’ Society of Canada. Active members of Toronto’s art scene, the couple supported other artists. After both of their deaths in 1968, they left a bequest to establish a fund to purchase the works of young sculptors. 

WATCH this CBC video of Wyle and Loring at work in their studio.

Marjorie Pigott

Japanese-British artist Marjorie Pigott combined both cultures in her work by applying a style of Japanese watercolour to Canadian landscapes. Raised in Japan, Pigott studied art at the centuries-old Nanga School. Leaving Japan during the Second World War, Pigott and her sister moved to Canada in 1940, eventually settling in Toronto. In the 1950s and 1960s, she taught the Nanga painting technique to Japanese Canadians, bringing this style of art to Canada. She adapted the Nanga technique in her own works of wet-into-wet watercolour florals and landscapes. Her work added to the diversity of Toronto’s – and Canada’s – art scene. In the 1960s and 1970s, her works were exhibited in Toronto and across the country, including in many solo exhibits.

Black Wimmin Artists

Trailblazers are not just a thing of the past. Women continue to carve out a place for themselves in Toronto’s art scene. In January 2019, the Art Gallery of Ontario hosted an event called The Feast: A Gathering of 100 Black Wimmin Artists. Organized by the Black Wimmin Artists collective, the performative event was a gathering of 100 Black women and gender non-conforming artists in Canada’s art world. The attendees were served a three-course meal at long tables in the gallery’s Walker Court, while guests watched the historic gathering from the sidelines.

Black Wimmins Artists began in 2016 on the messaging app WhatsApp as a space to connect and celebrate the work of Black artists in Canada. The Feast was a physical manifestation of that space and the first time the group gathered in person. The event celebrated what these artists have, and continue to, accomplish in the arts.

*Sources: 

Merna Forster, 100 more Canadian Heroines. Toronto: Dundurn Press, 2011.

“Marjorie Pigott,” Canadian Women Artists History Initiative, Concordia University.

Amanda Parris, “In the heart of the AGO, 100 Black women artists gathered to celebrate. Is it a sign of true change?” CBC Arts, February 8 2019.

Angelyn Francis, “How ‘Black Wimmin Artist’ Went From Whatsapp Group To Real-Life Community,” Huffpost, February 22, 2019.