Bittersweet presents selected artworks from an earlier grant project that expanded my artistic practice and fostered artistic collaborations with 3 Deaf artists. I wanted to push out of my own box, creatively expand into different mediums, textures, and approaches in my work. Using four areas of creative research, I dove into themes of whimsy, humour, grief, anger, pain, and an evolving identity.

Wynne Paquette is an artist based in Guelph, Ontario, whose work in oil paint and cold wax centers on expressive, atmospheric landscapes. Through a process of layering, scraping, and rebuilding the surface, Paquette creates tactile compositions where vibrant colour and texture work together to evoke both energy and quiet reflection.

My work emerges from experiences of foreignness shaped by living in multiple countries. While movement has offered growth and adaptation, it has also created a sense of displacement. Rooted in childhood road trips, car travel became a constant connecting past, present, and future. Seen from behind the steering wheel, the work explores roads and transitional landscapes as metaphors for memory, migration, and emotional transition through atmosphere, light, and weather.