Exhibitions

Janna Watson | What Falls From The Sky
Opening Reception: Wednesday, September 9, 5:30 - 7:30 PM | Artist in Attendance
September 10 - October 5, 2026
Bau-Xi Gallery | Dufferin
1384 Dufferin Street, Toronto

Emerging from Janna Watson’s deepening relationship with the landscape surrounding her Grey County studio, her newest exhibition explores the exchange between opposing energies - water and light, earth and sky, the human and the spirit. Drawing on the shifting moods of the forest and sky, Watson’s newest abstract paintings consider nature as a generous, creative force, and our place within the living relationships that connect us to it.

Artist statement: 

“And the brush, always overhead, dripping, until my face is the floor it decorates.” - Michelangelo Buonarroti, from a sonnet to Giovanni da Pistoia, 1509, written while he was painting the ceiling that includes The Creation of Adam.

The work proceeds from an exchange between two energies, water and light, earth and sky, the human and the spirit, and from the interval that holds them. It is a continued investigation into my developing language with abstraction and in my own deepening experience of being in nature.

I have never felt I belonged anywhere the way I belong when I open the gate of the property to my studio in Grey County and walk into what is waiting there. It feels like the land receives me. In the evening, a wood thrush sings from deep in the forest. It is almost melancholic, a deep sound, as though it is singing something that existed before language and borders. The bees and hummingbirds move from weed to flower with a purposefulness that has nothing to do with ownership and everything to do with relationships. The forest changes every day. Silly and bright one morning, moody the next, depending on how the sky is casting shadows.

The sky, for me, is the original abstract painter. Clouds compose and decompose in light, mood moving across them like breath, casting feeling, unclaimed and unowned, onto the land below, available to everyone willing to stand still long enough to witness it. Skywoman, in the Haudenosaunee story, falls from a world above into one that wasn't finished yet, no ground waiting to catch her. She is known too by the Anishinaabe, on whose territory my Grey County studio stands. The animals gathered to help her, and together they built Turtle Island, a world made through generosity. It is one of many stories that have deepened my sense of nature's generosity, and of what it means to be part of the creative energy in nature. – Janna Watson

The story of Skywoman referenced above is drawn from the Haudenosaunee tradition, as retold by Robin Wall Kimmerer in Braiding Sweetgrass.

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Celia Lees | Eyes Shut
Inaugural Solo Exhibition in Vancouver
September 12-26, 2026
Upper Gallery
3045 Granville Street
Opening reception: Saturday September 12, 2-4 pm | Artist in Attendance

Bau-Xi Vancouver is proud to present Eyes Shut, the inaugural exhibition in Vancouver by the dynamic emerging Canadian artist Celia Lees.

An intuitive painter, Lees utilizes high abstraction to articulate emotion, interior thought and lived experience through colour, gesture and mark-making. In this new body of work, Lees explores the act of closing one’s eyes as a means of active selectivity, turning away from the barrage of information that infiltrates contemporary daily life, thereby reclaiming interior space. The new works are aptly minimal and make use of an autumnal palette, elegant staining and considered spare marks, exploring how restraint and selective attention can become visual strategies for enabling quieter space, thought and perception.

Lees' work is held in private collections across North America as well as Europe and Asia. It has also been placed in commercial spaces such as 200 Amsterdam in New York, Aria in Las Vegas, and The Laurel in West Palm Beach.

We are thrilled to welcome the Toronto based artist in person at her inaugural Vancouver opening reception on September 12.


Artist statement:

Eyes Shut considers the act of closing one’s eyes not as withdrawal, but as a deliberate position. Created in response to a culture defined by constant visibility and endless information, the works question the assumption that more knowledge leads to greater clarity; there are forms of knowing that overwhelm rather than illuminate, and forms of unknowing that enable space for intuition and inner conviction.

Rather than advocating ignorance, the paintings propose selectivity - an awareness that not every image, opinion, or experience demands our attention. Closing one’s eyes then becomes an act of agency, creating distance from external influence and making room for a quieter way of seeing. These works occupy the space that exists behind closed eyes, a private interior that belongs only to the individual.

They evoke the experience of inhabiting one’s own mind, where memory, emotion, and imagination dissolve into one another, forming an atmospheric landscape that exists beyond physical observation. In this sense, the paintings are less concerned with representing the external world than with giving form to the internal one, a universe that can only be accessed from within.   -Celia Lees, 2026


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Group Exhibition
August 6 - 31, 2026
Bau-Xi Gallery | Dufferin
1384 Dufferin Street, Toronto | Upper Gallery

This August, Bau-Xi Gallery | Dufferin is pleased to present INTO THE NIGHT, a group exhibition focused on representations of the night through the lens of photographers Richard Barnes, Barbara Cole, Michael Kenna, and Michael Wolf.

As the sun goes down each day, familiar landscapes, architecture, and human presence are redefined. This is captured through light, shadow, and composition, where time and place are transformed. Together, the artwork in this exhibition demonstrates how nighttime inspires artistic exploration and invites slower observation.

Nighttime doesn't conceal; it invites us to see the world differently.

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Drew Burnham | Alive and Talking
July 9 - August 3, 2026
Opening Reception Thursday, July 9 , 5:30 - 7:30 PM
Bau-Xi Gallery | Dufferin
1384 Dufferin Street, Toronto | Main Gallery

This July, Bau-Xi Dufferin is thrilled to share Alive and Talking, the eagerly awaited exhibition by highly sought after Canadian landscape painter, Drew Burnham. Rather than simply depicting nature, Burnham seeks to communicate what he describes as the spirit or essence of a place, allowing each painting to evolve intuitively as he works. This approach gives his landscapes a dynamic quality in which forests seem to sway, water appears to pulse, and the entire scene feels animated by an inner life.

Artist statement:

From nuclear particles to grasses, trees, rocks, water and so on to us, the world is made.  Although it may mystify us as to how beauty and sentience ‘become', it is this beauty and sentience which informs the works I do.

 The only goal I have had, through the countless months spent on each of these canvases, is to create an image which passes the life force of the subject over to the viewer. Time was ignored; having taken these four paintings through a lengthy period of creation, refinement, and completion. Every request I received from the forming images has been considered.

 It may be a tall order, but my wish is for the viewer to be taken into the realm where their spirit resides and resonates, on a deep level, with what they are experiencing.

- Drew Burnham, 2026

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Drew Burnham is a Canadian landscape painter best known for his distinctive, stylized realist depictions of the coastal landscapes of British Columbia. His paintings combine vivid colour, flowing glazed lines, and carefully structured compositions to create scenes that feel both recognizable and animated with rhythm and energy.

Burnham studied fine art and architectural rendering at what is now Emily Carr University of Art + Design and at the University of Victoria, and trained under respected Canadian artists Don Jarvis and Toni Onley. Burnham's work often focuses on forests, shorelines, islands, rivers, and small coastal communities, capturing not only their physical forms but also a sense of movement and atmosphere. His paintings blend realism with a graphic, almost architectural approach, using bold outlines and layered paint to give landscapes a luminous quality.

Over the years, Burnham has become one of Canada's most sought-after contemporary landscape painters, with numerous sold-out exhibitions and works held in private and corporate collections, including those of the City of Vancouver, the Edmonton Art Gallery, and Athabasca University. 

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Career Launcher Exhibition | OCADU Centre for Emerging Artists & Designers
July 9 - August 3, 2026
Opening Reception Saturday, July 11 , 1 - 3 PM
Bau-Xi Gallery | Dufferin
1384 Dufferin Street, Toronto | Upper Gallery

The partnership between OCAD University and Bau-Xi Gallery over the years reflects a shared commitment to supporting the next generation of Canadian artists as they transition from academic study into professional practice.

This collaboration continues with the Career Launcher Exhibition, which will provide emerging artists with invaluable exposure to collectors, and the broader arts community, while offering practical experience in the early stages of their burgeoning careers.

In this years edition, we are thrilled to present works by Alicia Tian, Ben Janssen, Chimemelie Okafor, Jes Bonnie, Nadine Alexeev, Sofia D'Onofrio, Sue Mackay, and Veronika Bondarenko.

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