above painting "Chiaroscuro" shown installed at Art Gallery of Northumberland.

The original Studies in Light & Energy series
Long term body of work begun in 2002

Art Gallery of Northumberland solo exhibitions of Studies in Light & Energy, 2007 and 2015


thoughts on the act of painting 

For me mark-making seems to stretch invisible and continually reshaping strands between my subject and the canvas. I don't think this challenging process will ever be resolved which is probably a good thing. The longer I make art the more important I think that uncertainty is - as an essential ingredient for finding a way to say something compelling and worth sharing.  My commitment to long term formal experimentation has, over the years, developed into a working style and technique that explores the dynamic yet fragile interconnectedness of  a volatile environment and the human psyche.

I experience painting as an act of translation and transformation as I interweave, through paint, interesting dualities and parallels between the real and unreal.

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Alex McLeod, Canyon (detail), Rebecca Last, Studies in Light & Energy no 24, (detail),Bruno Billio, Gold Book Sculpture (detail)

2025


Click this link to arrange a Studio Visit.




CURATOR Kelly McCray

The All that Glitters exhibition investigates “simulated” worth and the dazzling appeal of glistening, shiny surfaces that excavate their weight through captivating allure... The artists in the exhibition find inspiration in the outer night sky, the digital realm, the realm of knowledge and the simulated value of material consumption to push themes that glitter beyond their façade.
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Stardust series piece, Diptych, 36" x 72" acrylic on canvas, Rebecca Last

FIRST CANADIAN PLACE LOBBY

All that Glitters
Exhibition curated by Kelly McCray

100 King St West, Toronto





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James Baird Gallery
654 MAIN ROAD
Pouch Cove, Newfoundland, Canada
T: 800-563-9100

FINDING LAND
April 25 - May 19, 2021
Group Exhibition with Darrell Bell, Ken Faulks, Holly Friesen, Rebecca Last, Kara McIntosh, Peter Rotter, David Wilson.






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"Between" triptych installation Yorkville Toronto purchased through Art Gallery of Ontario Sales & Rentals
"Between" triptych installation
Condo Lobby, Yorkville, Toronto
Studies in Light & Energy series begun 2003
40" x 1200" acrylic on canvas


"Rebecca Last adds to our love of Canadian landscape painting with a fresh new vision. We experience in awe, along with its beauty, the drama of its energy and power. "  Artist Helen Lucas




SELECT EXHIBITIONS

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The point (of artmaking for Rebecca "is to go somewhere new because you need to develop richer layers, and you take risks... In the end it's about resolving challenges and letting yourself be challenged. If you allow yourself to go into those places, you get into richer territory, and it's those richer layers that resonate ..." 
"Lake Effect" Artist at Rice Lake,      Cottage Life Magazine





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2025

ART  GALLERY  OF  ONTARIO
New works
currently available through AGO Sales and Rentals





The Pouch Cove Foundation Residency work
Paintings
currently available through
James Baird Gallery
or

Toronto Artist Studio by appointment



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Rebecca Last’s large scale renderings of environmental power speak to our complex inter connectedness with the natural world. Employing the concept of garden, rich in historic and cultural significance, Last considers how we cultivate our landscape and manipulate the geography of our planet.  By “tracing” experiences of exposure to the elements at her Rice Lake studio, this work acknowledges our deeply rooted psychological ties to landscape.

Grounded in observation and place, these are not literal “scenes” but rather poetic responses in paint.





Cottage Life Magazine

Lake Effect
by Alex Newman
photography Edward Pond

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Last finds that the deeper she explores the effects of the lake’s changing weather on sky, land, and water, the deeper she understands nature’s quixotic energy and her won artistic capabilities. It serves to remind her that, as she says, “nature is not benign, and we are not its master.”
Alex Newman, Cottage Life Magazine




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Chicago Arts Group visiting Last's Toronto Studio while touring Toronto's art scene.
They have  just come from Joseph Drapell's Studio.
https://drapell.com/drapell.com/Default.aspx





Climate Report
Documentary presented Warsaw, March 2013
United Nations
"Through Silence" featured.



Waterkeeper Art Collection
https://www.waterkeeper.ca/
Nova Scotia
"Split Sky"



Shifting Ecologies
curated by Marianne Van Lent
June 17 - July 12, 2014

Chelsea, New York City
Main Gallery & Project Room:

view exhibition information
Opening Reception: Today - June 19, 6–8 pm
Panel Discussion: Friday, June 20, 6 - 8 pm
Moderator: Erik Baard, Writer
Panel - Regina Cornwell, Eco Art Producer, Barnaby Ruhe, Dr. of Shamanism, Jacob Park,
Designer of Eco Art in Business, Diane Burko, Painter and Eco-Artist, Veronica Davidov, Social Scientist



 AURORA  CULTURAL  CENTRE
August 11  through September 29, 2018
Cassandra's Garden; tracing shifted ground




ONTARIO SOCIETY OF ARTISTS
Parrot Gallery
Prince Edward County, Ontario
September 2020 and 2024




AGNES JAMIESON  GALLERY, MINDEN
Peripheral Visions
https://mindenhills.ca/agnes-jamieson-art-gallery/
April 4 through May 25, 2019



YORKMINSTER PARK GALLERY, TORONTO
October 12 through November 15, 2018




For over a decade I have created a long term series of studies the light and energy over Rice Lake. This single yet constantly shifting point of departure has offered a dynamic metaphor for the personal as well as cultural evolution of creativity through environment.

"in the most successful of these works (Last) achieves the near-impossible, capturing a mood, an instant of time, that quintessential moment of change that, while uniquely itself, also contains traces of its predecessor and hints of its antecedent."

Walter Luedtke, Arts Northumberland, 2008


"The painter’s evolution from earlier, more literal representations, to fierce turbulent chaotic swings of nature offer viewers a rare portrait of a land whose every shift in mood and temperament are captured with the deft handling of the brush.

...she has taken to challenging the viewers conceptual reach with non - figurative representations of matter, mass, energy and light, tethering the knife’s edge between landscape, mutating atmospheric forms and ethereal solar matter. The technique and paint application used for these diverse representations are applied with the same integrity and virtuosity: a palpable physicality transferring energy, light and emotion between the painter and the viewer."

Edge of Chaos
The Paintings of Rebecca Last
Kelly McCray


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Rebecca Last adds to our love of Canadian landscape painting with a fresh new vision.
We experience in awe, along with its beauty, the drama of its energy and power. 

Artist Helen Lucas

Traces of Here
Exhibition Review, Elizabeth Kilbourne, 2016

Brilliant monochromes, vast areas of red, or yellow/orange, blue.
In   her smaller works, we are confronted by clumps of matter, sparkling colours.
Sensuality is not her forte but philosophy is
—a stunning exhibition.

solo exhibition
Arts & Letters Club, Toronto
experiences in ART making

My working process is a personal concoction of a few different formal approaches combined. Initially the work is based on naturalist studies and observations - an approach I still take when I begin a new body of work. These studies form a kind of psychological backbone for work that later becomes more automatic in nature and that depends upon a letting go of preconceived ideas about where the image will go and how it will look when finished. Using matter that drives us as humans I explore unconscious responses that I hope will resonate with the interior mental spaces of others,


Studio visits are welcome by appointment.
the artistic appeal of a northern lake

Studies in Light and Energy
A Climatologist’s Perspective on Conditions affecting Rice Lake
Dr. Colin Banfield

Toronto studio

My Toronto studio is located on the eastern edge of the valley in Riverdale. It has been my working base for over two decades. This is where I work through many of the ideas from Rice Lake and other sites. Over the years I have invited visitors including others working in the field to see at my current work and discuss art.

"Your reach as a viewer is vastly greater than your reach as a maker. The art you can experience may have originated a thousand miles away or a thousand years ago, but the art you can make is irrevocably bound to the times and places of your life. Limited by the very ground on which you stand.

...Seen against the vast sweep of history, it is only for brief moments that particular events and beliefs carry the power to compel us to build cathedrals or write fugues. And it's just as likely that a similarly narrow (albeit different) range of beliefs drives all that is authentically available to us in this moment. Decisive works of art participate directly in the fabric of history surrounding their maker. Simply put, you have to be there."

Art & Fear,  1993,  David Bayles and Ted Orland
"The artistic appeal of Rice Lake under the influence of variable weather and light conditions owes much to its particular geographic location and siting.  From a broad climatic viewpoint, its situation in south-central Ontario results in a rich variety of changeable weather patterns through the year.  Each well-defined season brings its own characteristic imprint of atmospheric and light conditions resulting from the differences in sun elevation, cloud types and frequencies, wind speed [or lack of], and the effects of air humidity and man-made pollutants upon visibility. Given that many active weather systems and their attendant clouds will arrive from a western origin, the artist is well placed at the eastern end of the lake to observe the approaching cloud sequences and attendant changes in light and colour of sky, land and water, including sunset scenes."
"Equally satisfying as a portrait of a specific location, the paintings engage in the mysterious unknown of natural phenomenon here and beyond our sight.  Luxurious use of colour reminds us all to observe more closely the rich texture of our national landscape."

Dorette Carter, Director/Curator
Art Gallery of Northumberland
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OPENING soon
Agnes Jamieson Gallery, Minden
April 4 through May 25

JOIN US!
April 5, 4:30 - 6pm Opening Reception
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"Between" triptych installation Yorkville Toronto purchased through Art Gallery of Ontario Sales & Rentals
“The painter’s evolution from earlier, more literal representations,to fierce turbulent chaotic swings of nature offer viewers a rare portrait of a land whose every shift in mood and temperament are captured with the deft handling of the brush.”

Edge of Chaos
Catalogue
Curator, Mr. Kelly McCray

ongoin

RESIDENCES & VISITING ARTIST

The solitary nature of being an artist is sometimes broken by the collective nature of a residency. These experiences have always allowed me to focus on developing new ideas with such a deep focus and within such a rich supportive environment, that I know my work has benefited in ways impossible had I not had these opportunities. Although secluded space and time to focus on one's work is really the key function of a residency; interacting with a range of creative people, engaging in shared critiques and developing lasting international relationships has been really wonderful.



RECENT
2025 work

This ongoing series of paintings based on Newfoundland experiences of the landscape continue into 2025
Residency Fellowship
POUCH COVE FOUNDATION
 Newfoundland, Canada
2022
1 month Artist in Residence

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NANJING CHINA
Nanjing N. University, China

1988
Visiting Artist
6 month Cultural Exchange
Award funded by the Ontario Ministry of Culture, Canada
Nanking, China

Living and working in the University work unit, Fine Art Department. Lecturing on Canadian Art.
Visiting other Art Departments in Nanjing and area.

VCCA
Virginia , USA

2008
Awarded Fellowship
Artist in Residence Art Project
Virginia Center for the Creative Arts
Mount San Angelo , Virginia, USA

BANFF               Alberta, Canada

2005
Multi-disciplinary self-directed Residency Programme
Banff Centre for the Artst
Alberta, Canada

HAMBIDGE
Appalachians, Georgia, USA

1999
Artist in Residence
2001
The Hambidge Center
 Twice Awarded Residency Support
Rabun Gap, Georgia, United States

"When you start on a long journey, trees are trees, water is water, and mountains are mountains. After you have gone some distance, trees are no longer trees, water no longer water, mountains no longer mountains. But after you have travelled a great distance, trees are once again trees, water is once again water, mountains are once again mountains."     
Zen teaching

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