Modern Artist Profile - Joanne Feely DeGraaf
/In conversation with Joanne Feely DeGraaf, one of the many talented artists participating in the 2025 Mississauga Festival of Trees.
1. Tell us a bit about your art practice. What do you specifically do?
I have been an artist my whole life; I explore the world through art, seeking to find and create meaning. Art allows me to communicate, connect, and collaborate. Each artwork I create is a chance to focus on and learn about aspects of our shared world and our relationship with it.
My media choices are dictated by the perceptual effects I wish to achieve. Different media allow me to communicate more directly about specific ideas, so I select the material and process that I feel best suits the idea at hand. My art practice ranges from art installations, digital imaging, murals, and smaller scale compositions. One medium is not enough for me to communicate all that I wish to say, so I continue to explore new combinations and methods.
Most of my artwork in recent years explores humanity’s connection to the natural environment. By scaling up small features of nature, I wish to celebrate its intricacy and beauty. By offering up detailed views of nature on a macro scale, I want viewers to connect to the natural world on a personal level, reflect on it and see it in a new way.
2. What inspires you?
Nature offers an abundance of inspiration for me. Living and working in Mississauga, the flora and fauna of southern Ontario are familiar subjects in my artwork. I enjoy exploring the delicate beauty that I see in up-close examinations of flora and fauna. Whether I am studying the tender petals of a cherry blossom, or the wings of a dragonfly, I want to show its exquisite beauty and delicate frailty. The ephemeral quality of nature inspires me to give it permanence in my art.
3. How do you approach a new project?
My two dimensional artwork typically starts as digital compositions. I work out details as I create the final work, often choosing paint or mixed media for the final artwork. Three dimensional artworks typically begin with a prototype. That allows me to test how the media will work together physically and visually. Every artwork is a chance to explore knowledge, ideas and media; it is a creative puzzle to solve. I am always looking for a way to learn my way through the journey of creating, with the goal of better understanding my subjects, themes and media.
4. Describe the experience of working with CreativeHub 1352 in Mississauga on a commissioned artwork for the Festival of Trees.
My artistic practice continues to grow through collaboration so I am grateful for this opportunity to create an art installation for the 2025 Mississauga Festival of Trees. I am hyper-aware of the importance of organizations like CreativeHub 1352. They provide the necessary vision and infrastructure for artists to exhibit, and in so doing they are essential for growing and grounding local culture. The people of CreativeHub 1352 do this with grace because they know the power of the arts to bind communities together; they understand the creative process from a 360 degree view. Their energy comes from a place of experience, cultural wisdom and love of the arts.
5. What excites you about Mississauga's Festival of Trees?
Most of my artwork portrays natural subject matter, exploring how we connect to our environment, and local flora and fauna are my primary subject matter. I am, therefore, thrilled that CreativeHub 1352 and the City of Mississauga also value and celebrate our connections with nature by hosting the annual Mississauga Festival of Trees. Technology gets enough “screen-time.” Events like this help shift the focus by highlighting the importance of community, the arts, and the natural world.
6. What's in store for 2026?
I have been selected as one of the 2026 Resident Artists for the Olive Stack Gallery, Listowel, County Kerry, Ireland. As I will be there for the entire month of October, much
of 2026 will be spent preparing for, then immersing myself in this opportunity. Being second-generation Irish, born and raised in Canada, this offers possibilities for connecting my artistic practice to this heritage that has always been there, but has
been hard to articulate.
Over the years, Irish prose and poetry have been central to how I have grown to connect to my Irish family and the larger Irish culture. In this way, I want to explore mixed-media printmaking techniques during this artist residency. The media and methods of printmaking echo for me the literary threads that bind.
