About Zinnia

Hello and welcome,

I am Zinnia, the artist behind Studio Zinnia.

Since I was a child, I have loved gifting people things. I would craft an illustrated note, string together some wildflowers, write a short story, or perhaps decorate a box for worries to be set down. I would lovingly craft these offerings and leave them somewhere for the unsuspecting recipient to discover. I loved seeing how people would glow when they found them. I realize now that what I really loved was the invitation for a person to feel seen.

That intention continues through my work today.

One of my earliest experiences of art as recognition came in Grade 4, when I watched a documentary about Emily Carr. Until then, the art I had encountered and understood as significant was largely European. Her paintings showed me that the forests and landscape I knew in the Pacific Northwest were worthy of art. Although I did not realize this at the time, she also showed me the possibility of a woman trusting her own creative vision.

Years later, after my father died, I felt compelled to paint women. Painting became a way to reclaim my voice and explore what it means to belong fully to oneself. Through this process, I began to recognize my own experience as part of a wider awakening in women.

My creative practice begins with curiosity about how we discern what matters and shape a life in accordance with it, while remaining open to what we encounter. I draw from literature and poetry, the natural world, art history, conversations and daily life. I often follow connections between seemingly disparate ideas.

I think of these connections as portals. I find them in a line of poetry, while wandering through the forest or floating in the ocean. They also appear between sentences and in the pause within a conversation. They connect my inner experience to the world around me and offer another way of seeing.

Working intuitively with mixed media, I build and remove layers as each painting develops. Figures and botanical forms emerge alongside fragments of mythology and references to art history. Rather than beginning with a fixed outcome, I allow meaning to reveal itself as I work.

I am particularly interested in questions of voice, identity and sovereignty as a woman. My work seeks to unearth what is truly our own and disentangle who we are from what we inherit or absorb from the world around us. Beneath these questions is an interest in what happens when we stop seeking permission and begin trusting our own ways of knowing.

This impulse extends beyond painting into writing, hand-bound journals, teaching and gatherings. Sharing my work is part of the practice itself. I hope people recognize something of themselves within it and feel more awake to their own lives.

My background in English Literature and my Master of Arts from Simon Fraser University, which explored how experiences in nature expressed through art can help us articulate our ideals, continue to shape my practice. I am also an experienced high school teacher, with training in yoga and Transcendental Meditation and ongoing studies in fine arts.

I live and create in North Vancouver, British Columbia, where the forest meets the ocean.

With love,