Curated Contemporary Art Since 2005
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The Street Cleaner

Brandon Steen

The Street Cleaner


60 x 40 inches

Acrylic on birch panel


Waking Up” Series

In this new body of work, I wanted to feel and capture the stillness of the sun rising up and enveloping our city of Toronto and witness and feel the soul of the buildings and reflect on human’s kinship towards wildlife.

Found in the stillness, was the quiet stoicism of Toronto’s buildings long after they were built. I began to reflect on a quote by Winston Churchill, “We shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us”. Through this stillness, this new body of paintings took shape.

It was in that same stillness, as the sun loosens the vault on the cities frenetic hustle of humankind, that another hustle was afoot. That contrast, unseen to many is the natural rhythm of the animal world foraging through streets, alleyways and ravines, clawing and scratching to survive. Which brings me to another quote by another Englishman and adopted Torontonian E.T. Seton, “We and the beast are kin”. Nowhere can this be observed but at sunrise where the city is still and waking up.


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