The Art Department is thrilled to welcome painter Anouk Jonker to our growing artist roster.

Anouk Jonker was born in 1989 in the Netherlands and raised on the Lower Mainland in British Columbia. She studied painting in San Francisco at California College of the Arts. While living in the Bay Area, Jonker developed a painterly style characterized by large brushstrokes and a vintage palette. Since graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts, her paintings have been exhibited internationally in solo and group exhibitions. She has combined her passions for art and travel, participating in artist residencies in France, Germany, and Canada. She currently resides on Vancouver Island, where she continues a studio practice while finishing a Ph.D. in art history from Queen’s University. Her academic interests include the history of art collecting and art connoisseurship, as well as painters in the Low Countries between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Awards & Residencies

• Award of Excellence, Sooke Fine Art Show (2018)
• 1st Place painting, Canvas Unbound, Federation of Canadian Artists (2016)
• Alte Schule Artist Residency, Hohenstein, Germany (2016)
• Winner of 2nd 2015 Showcase Competition, ArtSlant NY, (2015)
• ‘Best in Show’ award, The Look Show, CACGV, (2015)
• Artist Residency, Kent Harrison Arts Council, Harrison Hot Springs, BC (2013)
• 59 Rivoli Aftersquat, Artist in Residence, Paris, France (2012)

The Space Between

Jonker's family relocated to Canada when she was seven years old. This early move instilled an attentiveness to the idea of memory and the ways it can both distort and romanticize the past. She became fascinated with family history and, by extension, history itself. These curiosities have become the foundation of her studio practice, as she navigates the space between memory and invention and explores art as a means of escapism.

Jonker's paintings evoke themes of childhood, domesticity, and leisure to create spaces that feel both familiar and fantastical. Broadly inspired by Renaissance history painting, she borrows the compositional structure of early European art and merges it with imagery drawn from rural Canadiana, domestic interiors, and figurative photography. Layering imagery allows Jonker to reimagine formal conventions in art, rethinking composition, scale, and narrative clarity. The viewer becomes an active participant in the construction of meaning.

More broadly, Jonker's work questions the role of painting within the contemporary art landscape. In an increasingly digital age, what can painting still offer? 

She emphasizes the tactile materiality of oil paint through bold brushwork, heavy application, and visible layers. By adding traditional decorative motifs such as floral bouquets, table runners, patterns, and frames, she also explores the role paintings play in interior decorating, challenging a viewer’s preconceived notions of ‘high’ and ‘low’ art.

Working Together

Jonker is currently finishing her Ph.D through Queen's University and exhibited in a solo show earlier this year at the McMillan Arts Centre. We look forward to supporting her as she continues to expand her studio practice. Please join us in welcoming Anouk Jonker to the TAD family.