Howdy (The Final Frontier)

About Howdy (The Final Frontier)

This contemporary painting by Toni Hamel features a surreal image of a cowboy in the West.

The provocative work of Toni Hamel often plays with iconic themes and imagery from popular culture. True to her surrealist influences, in this piece, Hamel has created an imaginary world where a cowboy, mounted on a horse, stands on a mountain top lassoing a cloud. The palette is vivid-- a bright blue sky filled with fluffy white clouds—a cheerful backdrop to the earth tones of the horse, and the mountain range. Hamel’s paintings tell a story—often with humour or satire about world events and ‘humanity’s hubris’—both historical and present day in dealing with them. Her beautifully detailed and colourful illustrations explore important topics that include the natural environment, societal standards and our own universal psychological ‘demons’.

“Here, I reference America's imperialism and its unrelenting quest to conquer and colonize. “ Toni Hamel

Toni Hamel was born in Italy in 1961. In the early 1980s, 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, the 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.