Monica Tap: Once, in summer

Latcham Art Centre

Monica Tap, Once, in summer, 2026. Oil on canvas. Image: Courtesy of the Artist and MKG127. Photo: Toni Hafkensheid.

Monica Tap
Once, in summer

July 25 – September 5, 2026
Opening Reception: Wednesday, July 29, 7 – 9pm
Latcham Art Centre, Stouffville
All are welcome, and admission is free.

This exhibition presents recent paintings by Monica Tap, drawn from two sources: sites along Pickerel River northeast of Georgian Bay, where Tap has spent many summers painting with friends and colleagues, and her archive of images from Canadian art history.

To begin, Tap reassembles images from her time at Pickerel River using cuttings of decommissioned auction catalogues. These intimate collages provide a map for her large-scale paintings, each fragment rendered in the colour and brushwork of the artist who made it, so that a single view is reconstructed through many eyes at once. Tap’s paintings retain the look of collage, with sharp cuts between fragmentary views, and defy a cohesive or romanticized vision of her subjects.

Tap’s large-scale paintings are accompanied by a suite of intimate en plein air oil sketches completed by the artist during her visits to Pickerel River over the last decade.

What gathers is both a close attention to places she has returned to over decades, and a reckoning with how those places have been pictured, circulated, and possessed in the history of landscape painting—a history that played a role in shaping our relationship to the land since colonization.

Monica Tap, So wide and so deep, 2026. Oil on canvas. Image: Courtesy of the Artist and MKG127. Photo: Toni Hafkensheid.

Plein Air Painting with Monica Tap

Saturday, August 1, 1 – 4pm
Memorial Park, Stouffville (Meet at Latcham Art Centre)
Register for free

Join Monica Tap for an afternoon of plein air painting in beautiful Memorial Park! Participants will meet in the gallery for a tour of Tap’s exhibition Once, in summer before heading to the park for the opportunity to join Tap in creating their own paintings “en plein air,” a method of painting directly within the landscape.

Latcham Art Centre gratefully acknowledges the Town of Whitchurch-Stouffville for their generous support of this exhibition.

About the Artist

Monica Tap uses landscape to consider questions of time and history, technology and memory. Her paintings are arrangements assembled from fragments including outtakes from painting’s history, elements from her own snapshots, colour notes, and memory, with each work operating as both an invention and a response to place.

Tap earned a BFA and MFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Halifax. She has had solo exhibitions at MKG127, Toronto; Margaret Thatcher Projects, New York; Dunlop Art Gallery, Regina; and Dalhousie Art Gallery, Halifax. Her work has been featured in group exhibitions at Remai Modern, Saskatoon; the Canadian Embassy, Washington, D.C.; The Painting Center, New York; Oakville Galleries; and Gallery Roy, Germany, among others.

Her work is held in public and private collections including the McMichael Collection of Canadian Art, Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Art Gallery of Hamilton, and the Würth Collection, Germany. She is Professor Emerita at the University of Guelph and lives and works in Toronto.

Monica Tap, Listening to the wind, 2026. Oil on canvas. Image: Courtesy of the Artist and MKG127. Photo: Toni Hafkensheid.

About Latcham Art Centre

Latcham Art Centre is a public art gallery that inspires the community to engage with arts and culture through dedicated exhibitions of contemporary art that reflect a range of artistic media and the cultural diversity of our province. Latcham Art Centre offers vibrant education programs that cultivate creativity and experimentation through classes, workshops, artist talks, and tours. Latcham Art Centre is located in Stouffville, Ontario, 45 minutes northeast of Toronto with free parking and is accessible via GO Transit. The Gallery is open to the public and admission is free.

Latcham Art Centre is accessible.

Gallery Hours:
Monday: 10am – 5pm
Tuesday: 10am – 8pm
Wednesday: 10am – 8pm
Thursday: 10am – 8pm
Friday: 10am – 5pm
Saturday: 10am – 5pm
Sunday: Closed

For more information please contact:
Jeff Nye, Curator
Latcham Art Centre
jeffrey.nye@latchamartcentre.ca

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