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The Faculty of Arts and Science Fine Art (Visual Art) Program announced two students, Meenakashi Ghadial and Jobelle Quijano, have won a , one of the most prestigious grants available to emerging representational artists, as well as one of the most substantial.

Valued at $17,000, the grant is one of the longest standings, with an history of recipients spanning more than half a century. It is also unique in its scope; in that it is available to students and artists around the world.

Based in Brampton, Ontario Meenakashi Ghadial uses portraiture as a self-reflective form of art exploring themes of identity, vulnerability. By using herself as the subject in many of her works, she uses intimate moments that are both posed and unposed to create a conversation around how the viewer interacts with the subject in a painting.

“I create a sense of intimacy by using perspectives that can only be seen from the privacy of my intimate spaces, as well as using subjects like my family and my partner outside of my self-portrait work,” Ghadial says. “As both a queer woman of colour, and the first second generation immigrant in my family, I aim to explore the parts of myself that I have had to censor in my work while navigating my identity. Queer bodies that belong to women of colour that exist in art are often shamed from their native backrounds, and misrepresented in the western art context. Through my work I am on a journey to represent the bodies and identities of queer women of colour unapologetically and accurately through representational work, while simultaneously creating a space for them to exist within the western art world.”

Professor Rebecca Anweiler says Ghadial pushes the boundaries of contemporary painting in her work. “She explores her sexuality within a traditional immigrant family structure, and her works exhibit both the love and the conflict this positioning entails for her. In the third-year paint course she took with me she challenged herself further, jumping off from her own photographs to develop an approach that was less overworked, more relaxed, and expressive of the potential of the portrait at capturing emotive moments.”

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Third Year student, Jobelle Quijano, has also earned an Elizabeth Greenshield Foundations Grant for $17,000 for work she produced in ARTF 137: Advanced Programs I: Painting, with Instructor Rebecca Anweiler.

Quijano is an artist based in Toronto, Canada. She is currently in her third year of studying for her Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) and through her artwork, she aims to create a vivid and honest image of her inner world by exploring themes of girlhood, comfort, vulnerability, fantasy, and nostalgia. The work she submitted to the Greenshields Foundation is title Castle Sleepover which depicts aspects of girlhood that are generally regarded as frivolous in a classical style, using the traditional medium of oil paint to bring the experience of young womanhood up to the status of high art.

“Jobelle Quijano is a highly dedicated student deeply committed to her art practice, often spending hours in the studio outside of class time to develop work from her own photographic images and her imagination, creating works with compositions that are complex and beautifully detailed,” says Professor Anweiler. “Her lush approach to figurative painting creates a surface built of many layers that form the richly built-up figures and negative spaces that compel close and considered viewing of the stories they tell.”

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