Opening Reception | Thurs. Mar. 19. 7-9 pm
Meet the Artists
March 19 - April 25, 2026
Earls Court Gallery is pleased to present A Path to Interplay, a two-person exhibition featuring new works by renowned pastel artist Clarence Porter and architect-painter Lesia Mokrycke. On view from March 19 – April 25, 2026, the exhibition showcases two experts in their media that both explore the experience of moving through landscape from their own artistic expression.
Clarence Porter’s luminous pastels capture pathways, neighbourhood streets, and familiar roadways with remarkable sensitivity to light. His compositions guide the viewer gently forward: down a shaded garden walk, across a sunlit suburban corner, into spaces where colour and shadow quietly shift. The pathway becomes both subject and metaphor — an invitation into reflection and the quiet poetry of everyday surroundings.
Lesia Mokrycke approaches landscape from a different, yet resonant perspective. Classically trained as both painter and landscape architect, her artistic practice abstracts the landscape. Her paintings are gestural fields of saturated reds, yellows, greens, and blues suggesting gardens, cities, and atmospheric spaces. Arcing forms and dripping layers hint at structures within nature while remaining fluid and emotive. Her landscapes are not fixed depictions, but living systems shaped by memory, travel, and environmental awareness.
Together, Porter and Mokrycke’s artworks create a dynamic interplay. Porter’s defined pathways meet Mokrycke’s immersive fields. His grounded vantage points converse with her expansive, layered natural spaces. Both artists are deeply attentive to how we inhabit place — how light alters perception, how colour carries experience, and how being present in a spaces transforms our perception of it.
A Path to Interplay will be on view in the main gallery at 215 Ottawa Street North, Hamilton. Earls Court Gallery is open Tuesday to Friday from 10 am to 5 pm, and Saturday from 10 am to 4 pm. All artworks will also be available to view online upon installation.
Please join us for the opening reception on Thursday, March 19 from 7–9 pm, where both artists will be in attendance.
Entry is free | Family Friendly | Fully Accessible | Groups Welcomed
About the Artists
“A Walk With Brian and Lola”
“Just Us Two - II”
Clarence Porter
“My job as an artist is to see and translate my visual and emotional moments into pieces that allow the viewer to see, feel and be in my moments giving the viewer pause to reflect on moments in time that I cherished, frozen in pigments.” Clarence worked in the Toronto advertising world as a graphic designer/art director until leaving to become a freelance commercial illustrator: a career move that spanned 40 plus years of creating illustrations for everything from packaging and logo designs to children’s’ books and magazine editorials, while working in a wide range of mediums. After relocating to Hamilton, he started working with pastels for his own pleasure and in 2006 Clarence was juried into the Pastel Artists Canada’s Purely Pastels Exhibition at the Art Gallery of Hamilton where he received an Honorable Mention. That was the impetus needed to continue working with pastels and he hasn’t looked back. Clarence is represented by Earls Court Gallery in Hamilton and his work has been collected locally and internationally. He received his Master Pastel Artist of Canada (MPAC) signature designation from Pastel Artists Canada in 2014 and was elected a Signature Member of the Pastel Society of America (PSA) in 2016. He is also a member of the Federation of Canadian Artists and the International Association of Pastel Societies. Ongoing sources of inspiration for Clarence are the pastels courses and workshops he teaches for adults. Clarence is an instructor at the Dundas Valley School of Art as well as an occasional instructor at the Art Gallery of Hamilton and the Aurora Cultural Centre. Clarence enjoys the interaction with creative minds of all ages. He finds collaboration with other artists using different media rewarding and enriching too.
Photo by Marta Hewson
Empire of the Sun
Field
Photo by Marta Hewson
Lesia Mokrycke
Lesia Mokrycke is a multidisciplinary landscape artist based in Hamilton. She is recognized as a contemporary voice for environmental art and design in Canada and is known for her creative, conceptual, and contemplative approach to shaping distinctive landscapes. A committed environmentalist, painter, designer, teacher and writer, she has lived abroad in three countries, traveled extensively and works on issues surrounding the degradation of urban forests in a global context. Lesia has been an Artist in Residence at Halls Island, Haliburton, ON; the Banff Centre for the Arts, Banff, AB; and Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, VT. Recently, she is the recipient of several awards including two grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, and an Education in Heritage award from the Hamilton Natural Heritage Committee. Lesia is the founder of the interdisciplinary studio, Tropos, and an Instructor at the University of Waterloo in Cambridge, where she teaches landscape architecture courses in the architecture department, bridging traditional drawing techniques with design thinking. Coupling poetics and a love of colour with the skills-set of a landscape architect, Lesia strives to create contemplative spaces that integrate environmental artworks into city infrastructure. Through sensory experience with nature, her paintings, drawings and installations explore how identity interfaces with ecology, climate and place. Lesia earned a Master of Landscape Architecture and a Master of Art from the Design School at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, integrating her ideas about environmental art and design through drawing. She holds a combined Bachelor of Fine Art from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Arts and Sciences, where she was classically trainied in drawing, painting and sculpture. As an undergrad at UPenn, she studied comparative literature, film and theory, graduating with honors.