At the Museum I

About At the Museum I

This surrealist painting by Toni Hamel features a Group of Seven piece and focuses on the theme of climate change.

In this imaginative painting, Toni Hamel sends a powerful message by faithfully replicating a beloved and iconic image from one of Canada’s best-known landscape artists, Lawren Harris of The Group of Seven.
In her usual clever and compelling way, Hamel has altered the original image so that it becomes surrealistic, crossing into the ‘fantastical’ and offering a different version of ‘reality. In a gallery setting, an older man stands, hands behind his back, gazing at one of Harris’s large landscape paintings set in the far north of snowy white mountains and glacial ice rendered in a vivid blue. A massive iceberg appears to be melting and drips over the edge of the painting, creating puddles on the floor. A partial view of a second framed landscape also depicts melting ice.

“The warming of the planet has consequences beyond our comprehension. Here, Lawren Harris's paintings slowly melt onto the museum's floor, yet the visitor is calmly observing the event, unable or unwilling to intervene. Too late to do anything about it?” Toni Hamel


Toni Hamel was born in Italy in 1961. In the early 1980’s she acquired a BFA from
the Accademia di Belle Arti of Lecce in Italy. Upon arriving in Canada, she furthered her studies and attained a post-graduate Certificate in Computer Graphics from Sheridan College (Canada, 1991).
The recipient of several awards—among others, she received the Golden Key National Honour Society Award from the University of Toronto (Specialist Programme in Psychology, 1997), and the Lubiam Prize (Milan, 1983).
Her work has been exhibited in public and commercial galleries in Canada, USA, and Europe. It is included in the public collections of Mr. J.J. Abrams, Ms. Whoopi Goldberg, Ms. Julia Roberts, the Archives of Ontario/Government of Ontario, the Robert McLaughlin Gallery, the Omer DeSerres Corporation, as well as many private international collections. Toni Hamel lives and works in Kingston, Ontario.