“The Hotel McGibbon is an early body of work of mine that consists of a series of paintings, sculptures and photographs surrounding a vacant hotel in my hometown, located just outside of Toronto.

I completed this body of work over the course of three years. I spent months meticulously painting the details of these large scale works depicting the interior spaces of the hotel, as well as the structure of the building itself. Later, I started to bring my grandfather into the building and photograph him within the environment, creating narratives whose aesthetic effects on viewers matched that of my internal dialogue, regarding myself and my family.

The labor intensive process of making these works forced me to isolate myself, concentrating only on the present task. I understood the hotel as a place that had been inhabited by a community, and the details I was spending hours rendering as the imprints of that community’s existence. I linked the building’s state of reality with all its flaws and beauty with that of my family’s and my own. Painting became a solitary practice, during which I developed the sense of security in myself that helped me confront and master the aspects of my family’s history that had negatively impacted me.

The paintings developed over many months, becoming journals that recorded my process of recovery. Through the depiction of the imprint of a community whose state was similar to that of my family’s, I began to better understand myself and my family’s behaviors. Painting became a mechanism to help myself through my struggle with my family’s history and that desire to heal became my motivation for completing the work.”

Through the mediums of photography, painting, and sculpture, emerging artist Jaime Pattison explores how art can mirror communities around her. After growing up in Georgetown Ontario, and later moving to downtown Toronto, Pattison moved to Detroit Michigan, where she is currently earning her BFA at College for Creative Studies. Pattison has exhibited both in her home city and internationally. Some of the most significant exhibitions she has been associated with include Push + Pull at The Albright Knox Gallery in Buffalo New York in 2017, and Flash Forward at Gardiner Museum Toronto in 2017. She is also the recipient of several awards, including a Scholastic National Gold Medal, 2017.