Toni Hamel was born in Italy and currently lives and works in Oshawa, a suburb of Toronto, Canada. She is the recipient of many awards and three Ontario Arts Council grants (2011, 2012, 2014). Her work has been exhibited in museums, commercial galleries and art fairs in Canada and abroad, and it is included in the public art collections of the Archives of Ontario/Government of Ontario, the Robert McLaughlin Gallery, the Omer Deserres Corporation, as well as in private collections in Canada, the US, and Europe. Hamel describes her work as “an illustrated commentary on human frailties.” Rooted in story-telling, her art practice draws from personal experiences and outward observations to create thematic bodies of work that reflect on and interpret the psychological unease characteristic of our age. For more, see her website http://www.tonihamel.net.