MEET THE ARTIST

Cynthia Chapman (born 1977, Toronto) is a Canadian abstract painter known for her intuitive command of colour and her immersive, emotionally charged series-based practice. Her paintings invite viewers into a visceral visual journey, where colour, gesture, and surface tension operate as a potent, expressive language. Art historian and curator Joan Murray writes that Chapman “offers certainties about color, emphasizing intuition over concept to snap into sharp focus her importance as an innovative colorist making some of the most riveting paintings of her career.”

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Chapman began exhibiting in 2003 at the esteemed Moore Gallery, operated by Ron Moore for more than three decades and known for its historical and contemporary contributions to Canadian art. During these early years, she emerged alongside a dynamic group of rising painters and deepened her connection to the lineage of Canadian abstraction. Her work shows a particular affinity with the material intensity of Jean-Paul Riopelle, whose influence helped shape her approach to gesture, space, and improvisation.

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Recognized early in her career, Chapman received the Solomon Painting Award (2000) and the Mrs. W.O. Forsyth Award (2003). In 2011, she was invited to work alongside her mentor and former instructor, senior abstract painter Ron Martin, assisting him in producing three major exhibitions at the Christopher Cutts Gallery between 2012 and 2014. Their collaboration continued until 2017, further refining her discipline and studio methodology.

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From 2017 to 2022, Chapman presented five solo exhibitions at Hatch Gallery in Bloomfield PEC, including Don’t Tread On Me (2017), That Way, My Way (2018), When Push Comes to Shove (2019), Impact (2021), and Restless Attraction (2022). Her painting Let It Bleed was noted by critic Bart Gazzola as a work that “leaps off the wall… rich and a bit revulsive (in an enticing way),” highlighting her ability to merge beauty with physical urgency.

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Between 2019 and 2025, Chapman was represented by the John Mann Gallery in St. Catharines, where she completed five annual solo exhibitions and continued to expand the scale, intensity, and ambition of her practice.

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Today, Cynthia Chapman is represented by Christopher Cutts Gallery, marking a full-circle return to the gallery where her early mentorship with Ron Martin took shape. Her evolving explorations of colour, structure, and emotional resonance position her as one of Canada’s most compelling and distinctive abstract painters.

See Curriculum Vitae for complete exhibition history.