Michelle Peraza, Implictus and Incognitus Inter-Cosmologies (detail), 2025, mixed media. Courtesy of the artist.

Michelle Peraza – Tú eres mi otro yo: Mundos, Mundo, Worlds

July 4, 2026 – October 3, 2026
Opening Reception: July 11, 2 – 4pm

Tú eres mi otro yo: Mundos, Mundo, Worlds presents new works by Michelle Peraza, a second-generation Latin American Canadian of Cuban and Costa Rican descent whose practice explores postcolonial identity, interconnection, and transformation. Developed during a two-year period of recovery following a serious car accident, the works emerge from Peraza’s personal journey of healing and draw on Curanderismo, a traditional healing approach that blends Indigenous Mesoamerican, African, and European medicinal knowledge with spiritual beliefs and ceremonial practices.

Using amate paper, medicinal plants, precious metals, hand-dyed textiles, and hand-stitched fibres, Peraza creates intricate works that speak to repair, resilience, and care. Guided by Mesoamerican worldviews and a deep reverence for celestial and earthly rhythms, she approaches artmaking as a process of re-worlding—extending personal healing into a broader consideration of how individuals, communities, and the natural world might heal, reconnect, and flourish together.

Robert Markle, State 1 (detail), 1987, lithograph on paper, edition 1/1. Courtesy of Marlene Markle.

Markle: Content is Just a Glimpse

July 4, 2026 – September 12, 2026
Opening Reception: July 11, 2 – 4pm

Content is Just a Glimpse is presented simultaneously at the Durham Art Gallery and Tom Thomson Art Gallery as a two-part exhibition exploring the life, work, and creative circle of Robert Markle (1936–1990). Known for his expressive and often provocative depictions of the female figure, Markle developed a multidisciplinary career that moved fluidly between painting, sculpture, music, writing, and teaching, establishing a reputation as a raffish figure who was at the heart of Toronto’s experimental art scene in the 1960s.

Following a motorcycle accident in 1970, Robert and his wife and lifelong muse, Marlene Markle, left Toronto and settled in Grey County, where a rural rhythm became intertwined with their shared creative life. This exhibition traces the people who informed Markle’s work—his muses, artistic peers, and creative community—while reflecting on his enduring legacy. Presented across two venues, Content is Just a Glimpse suggests that no single artwork, memory, or narrative can fully contain a life, offering instead a portrait assembled through fragments, relationships, and moments of encounter.

Tom Thomson, Grey Day (detail), c. 1913, oil on canvas, on wood panel. Bequest from Gloria M. and James E. Smith, 2025.

Forecast – June to January

June 27, 2026 – January 2, 2027
Opening Reception: July 11, 2 – 4pm

During the final spring of his career, Tom Thomson created a remarkable series of sketches in Algonquin Park that served as a visual diary of the season unfolding. His friend and fellow artist, Mark Robinson, recalled that Thomson referred to these works as his “records,” documenting the daily shifts in weather and landscape—from fog drifting across the lake at dawn, to the sudden shimmer of sunlight on birch bark, or the slow deepening of twilight over pine-covered ridges. This attentiveness exemplified his approach to the early twentieth-century landscape: not as static scenery, but as a living system in flux, with plein-air sketches recording changes in light, temperature, and atmosphere.

Building from Thomson’s devotion to observing these elements, Forecast extends this focus into the present through the concept of bioclimatic attunement—our bodily and emotional responsiveness to the atmosphere and the subtle ways we sense and adapt to weather. In addition to Thomson’s work, a salon-style hanging of selections from the Gallery’s collection traces the progression of the seasons in step with the exhibition running dates. Visitors are invited to tune their perceptions to the rhythms of changing skies and light. Situating us within the present, we are also compelled to consider how our awareness of familiar weather patterns—and their disruption—has evolved in a changing climate.

For more information about our current exhibitions, please visit our website.

About Tom Thomson Art Gallery

The Tom Thomson Art Gallery develops exhibitions and programs that enrich the region and contribute to national visual arts discourse. We promote and support emerging and professional artists, advocate for the creative sector, and actively research, preserve, develop, and exhibit the collection to promote scholarship and to generate and explore new ideas. We are committed to welcoming and inspiring people of all representations, ages, backgrounds, and abilities.

Tom Thomson Art Gallery
840 1st Avenue West
Owen Sound, ON N4K 4K4
www.tomthomson.org
ttag@tomthomson.org
519-376-1932

Facebook @tomthomsonartgallery
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Gallery Hours:
Tuesday to Saturday: 10:00am – 5:00pm
Sunday to Monday: Closed

Accessibility:
Tom Thomson Art Gallery is fully accessible. For more information, please visit our website.

The Tom Thomson Art Gallery operates with generous support from the City of Owen Sound, Canada Council for the Arts, and the Ontario Arts Council.