2023 Recipient: Kelsey Dawn Pearson

Photo by Maggie Whitmore
Photo by Maggie Whitmore

Kelsey Dawn Pearson is an artist residing in Katarokwi/Kingston. They recently graduated from Concordia University with an MFA in Print Media and hold a BFA from NSCAD. Pearson is a multidisciplinary artist using print, natural fibres and puppetry/performance as their main media. Pearson’s work explores themes of gender and body dysmorphia in relation to bodily connection to land.

Their work is supernatural, chaotic and colourful swampwater.

They explore themes of distorted reality, confront personal ethics, battle dysphoria, bridge fiction and the present through the use of portals, touch, feel and play…

In a world bordering ours.

About the Nan Yeomans Grant for Artistic Development

The Nan Yeomans Grant for Artistic Development aims to help young visual artists and/or artisans further their artistic growth and education. It awards one annual grant of $2,500 to an emerging artist between 17 and 40 years old, who may be practicing in any visual medium including painting, printmaking, photography, sculpture, installation, pottery, fabric, glass, metal, film and/or video. All applicants must have an address in the Kingston area, which includes the City as well as the Townships of Loyalist, South Frontenac, Central Frontenac, North Frontenac, and Frontenac Islands. The grant is intended for training or focused creation that will contribute to the artist’s development and career. 

Applications are assessed by a jury of peers based on eligibility, financial need, and artistic merit. The grant is made possible through an endowment fund administered by the Community Foundation for Kingston & Area.


Important Documents

2023 Guidelines

2023 Application Form

2023 Application Tips

2023 Final Report


Deadline

The application period is now closed. Thank you to all who applied!


About Nan Yeomans

Nan Yeomans was a prominent Kingston artist dedicated to supporting local and emerging artists in the visual arts. In her late twenties, she enjoyed three summers at Queen’s University Summer School of Fine Arts, and subsequently, she lived most of her adult life in Kingston. From then and for the rest of her 82 years she stayed busy with her art and her other responsibilities, but always found time to contribute to the community. She died in 2004, leaving all of her art and almost all of her estate to the Community Foundation for Kingston & Area.

It was Nan’s wish to fund a grant for promising young artists and artisans developing their talents in the greater Kingston area. The Nan Yeomans Fund, established at the Community Foundation for Kingston & Area with her bequest, now provides for an annual award in her name that is administered by the Kingston Arts Council.


2022 RECIPIENT 

Kelsey McNulty

City Girl, 2022

Kelsey is a Canadian collage artist and animator. Her art is influenced by her career as a travelling musician and a desire to construct new worlds and see things from new perspectives. She draws inspiration from Eduardo Paolozzi’s screen-printed collages and his suggestion on the way images influence our reality. With a focus online and colour, she creates vivid scenes and landscapes and attempts to balance humour and introspection in her work.

 


Past Recipients

2021 RECIPIENT
Natasha Jabre

Suzy and August, 2017

Natasha Jabre is a Kingston-based teacher and artist whose most recent painting series fills scenes of children and toys with colourful light. Her work, which includes drawings, paintings, and sculptures, has been exhibited locally and internationally.

 

2020 RECIPIENT
Tonya Corkey

Everyone will be a was, 2020

Tonya will use the Nan Yeomans Grant for Artistic Development to attend a table loom class and a residency at the Icelandic Textile Centre, where she will research and create a new series of sculptural works.

 

2019 RECIPIENT
GHY Cheung

will you miss me when I'm gone, 2017

The Nan Yeomans Grant supported GHY Cheung's project in Hong Kong—a love letter in the form of several interventions that take their cue from “Friendship as a Way of Life.” This series is part of a larger exploration of intimacies formed in displacement (temporary travel, permanent migration) and relationships sustained over long distances as potential sites of queer world-making.

 

2018 RECIPIENT
Ella Gonzales

Living Room, 2016, photo by Mark Kasumovic

The Nan Yeomans Grant supported Ella to expand her artistic practice across mediums, including painting, video and installation. Upcoming projects will explore themes of inhabited space(s), migration, temporalities and cultural identity.

 

2017 RECIPIENT
Jennifer Demitor

Threshold, 2016

Jennifer's work uses the built environment to adjust our perceptions of the natural world and connect us to our surroundings. As the recipient of the 2017​ ​Nan Yeomans Grant for Artistic Development, Jennifer began a series exploring prevalent themes in her practice within the context of a new more permanent medium.

 

2016 Kyle Vingoe-Cram
2015 Kevin Rodgers
2014 Leigh Ann Bellamy
2013 Mariell Waddell Hunter
2012 Ebonnie Hollenbeck
2011 Michelle Mackinnon
2010 Michael Davidge
2009 Vincent Perez
2007 Lisa Visser