Vanessa McKernan is an oil painter from Toronto who recently relocated to the countryside of the Ottawa Valley with her family of four. Vanessa views the act of painting as a dynamic practice, where the unconscious intermingles with ideas and imagery taken from dreams, observations, historical works of art, and personal experiences. Often drawing on the inherent symbology of the garden, her paintings explore cycles of death and rebirth, impermanence, intimacy, mothering and the intricacies of the feminine psyche.