RONIN BRAY ............................................................. A LONG JOURNEY
ANGELINA CAI ................................ IT’S A PRETTY WORLD CRUSHING
STEVEN CAROGIOIELLO ................................................... FALSE FAITH
BELINDA CHENG ................................................................. BLACK EYE
BROOKE LOWRY ...................................... CONNECTED BY ISOLATION
IZABELLA MARZILLI .............................................. A WORLD DIVIDED
SYDNEY M ac DONALD ................ BIOESSENTIALIST BLOOD AND BONE
KITTY ZHANG ........................................................................... FINALE
SAVANNAH BRATTY
SCHOOL HOUSE: Ross
TITLE: Timeless Glamour
MEDIUM: Oil on Canvas
Art has always been something I’ve turned to as a source of creativity. Instead of just being a form of expression, it’s always felt like an extension of who I am as a person. Art always seemed like a natural language to me as a kid. Whether in the form of painting, drawing, or crafting, it helps me express my feelings and thoughts that I find difficult to put into words. As I move forward to pursue other interests, art will always be a constant in my life as something I can fall back on and look forward to when things get stressful. No matter where my future takes me, art will always play a role in what shaped me into the person I am now.
Timeless Glamour is an oil painting based on a photo I took on vacation in California. The title of the piece was inspired by the original photo, which was taken at The Beverly Hills Hotel. The painting includes the iconic Californian palm trees and luxurious cabanas, along with the views of a traditional Beverly Hills mansion. The painting was created to make you feel as though you were living in one of the most prestigious hotels in the nation, alongside some of the most elite celebrities. While looking at the piece, I hope the audience feels the same sense of warmth and comfort I felt whilst painting it. Overall, Timeless Glamour is more than just a painting to me; It’s an escape into a world of sun, nostalgia, and the Californian dream.
RONIN BRAY
SCHOOL HOUSE: Taylor
TITLE: A Long Journey
MEDIUM: Digital Painting
Art has always been a fundamental part of who I am and how I see the world. From a young age, I’ve naturally leaned toward abstract and creative thinking. My brother was the one who sparked my journey into art, he introduced me to sketching, digital art, and even blacksmithing. That early exposure fueled my imagination and became a defining part of my personality. I draw a lot of inspiration from fantasy and nature, which I often incorporate into my work. Art gives me a way to bring my ideas to life visually, and there’s a deep sense of satisfaction in that.
A Long Journey reflects my love for the world of fantasy and adventure. It portrays a lone knight resting beneath the shade of an old tree in the heart of autumn. The mountains in the background symbolize the beauty and grandeur of nature, while the stillness of the lake evokes a sense of peace and completion. Life can get a little tiring sometimes, and we all need moments of rest. With this piece, I aimed to improve both my shading and perspective skills. The lighting from the sunset was particularly challenging, but by the time I finished, I had grown more confident in handling both light and shadow.
A LONG JOURNEY
ANGELINA CAI
SCHOOL HOUSE: Ross
TITLE: It’s Pretty World Crushing
MEDIUM: Oil on Canvas
For the longest time I didn’t consider myself an artist, which is odd because now, I’m constantly thinking about art. It’s a consistent presence in my life: I’ve got spaces in my house dedicated to art storage and supplies, my desk is at least always occupied by a sketchbook and I also always bring a pen and one of those free notebooks you get from fair booths when I go out– because what if I see something I really want to draw?
Your passion becomes part of who you are when it seeps into the mundane. When a physicist is tossing laundry into their washing machine and starts thinking about the projectile motion of a sock, they’ll know then that they are a physicist. When a mathematician sees their neighbor walking their dog and starts modeling that in their head, they’ll definitely know they are a mathematician. Surely then, I’m an artist, because why else would I be staring at a brick wall thinking: “I wonder how I would make that texture with oil paint?”
I was 17 when I started “It’s Pretty World Crushing”, and 18 when I finished it. Suffice to say, I was thinking alot about what it means to be an adult. When I was creating the concept of this piece, I was pretty overwhelmed by the feeling that the world around me was rapidly enlarging at a pace I could not keep up with. I felt that adulthood would only accelerate that pace with more things to manage and be constantly aware of. Around this time I also wrote in my journal - “I want to pull in the corners of the world and wrap it around my shoulders. Apparently, Writing in my journal was not enough to assuage my worries, so these thoughts spilled over into my art. So the big large world became a big large cityscape, taking up a lot more space on the canvas than I do. The end result is this piece, in which I sit at the bottom of the canvas, while the world above sits upside-down.
STEVEN CAROGIOIELLO
SCHOOL HOUSE: Ross
TITLE: False Faith
MEDIUM: Digital Painting
Ever since I was a child, I have always been fascinated by art work, pictures and paintings, online work and animation, video game art, and so forth. It’s been with me my whole life, given me inspiration behind some of my art pieces through the years, and I would like to think it has somehow made me a better person. When I was in Grade 5 my dream was to become a game designer, to draw out and map the whole Art aspect of a video game before developing it. That’s why I loved art so much, because everything I love, somehow, art is always even just 5% in whatever it is. This goal kept me in art all through grade 5 - 12, but eventually you realize that dream I had as a kid, was a bit harder to achieve then just knocking on someone’s door, but if I ever really had the time to look at the dream from a wider perspective just for a little while, I would try to make it happen.
False Faith is an art piece I created because of how close it feels to me right now. My drawing is simply put, a church. This church is the same one I went to when my great grandmother passed away. When I took the photo that day, I didn’t think of drawing it at all. But after choosing conceptual for the art project, I decided on religion, what it means to me, and others. In the far middle, you can see a man sitting down, with a brick wall in front of his face. The wall represents doubt, and Jesus represents certainty. Faith and False Faith. As the man is praying, the words are being blocked by the wall, the man is thinking, his words will not reach God/Jesus, but on the other side of the wall we see the same words show up again, showing that his words reached the other side, even though he believed they didn’t, he should’ve believed they would.
BELINDA CHENG
SCHOOL HOUSE: Eberts
TITLE: Black Eye
MEDIUM: Oil on Canvas
Art has always found its way back into my life, no matter how my priorities have shifted over the years. It’s become a foundational part of my identity, something I return to not just for comfort, but for growth. Throughout my years at CDS, I’ve had the privilege of meeting many talented artists, some of whom I’m grateful to call friends. Their ingenuity continues to inspire and motivate me to create more. To me, art is both a form of expression and a powerful tool for communication. It challenges me to step out of my comfort zone, experiment with new mediums, and embrace vulnerability. I’m drawn to the way art can boldly and honestly portray difficult themes, spark meaningful conversations, and push for real change in our society. As I look toward new chapters in my life, I hope to keep developing my skills and discovering art that moves, challenges, and helps me become who I want to be.
Black Eye , my first oil painting, came with a set of challenges. Coming from a primarily digital palette, I started this piece with low expectations. Navigating a new medium was daunting at first, but I began to grow fond of the way it works. Black Eye is meant to convey a sense of wonder and self-discovery. Her stoic visage sharply contrasts with her inner, brighter layer, uncovering the vulnerability held behind. This piece reveals an imagery of introspection and reflects the many ways people hide inner thoughts or feelings. It handles the appearances vs reality of many celebrities, or outwardly flawless figures we look up to or encounter. The subject was chosen for its composition, and the muted tones contrast with the colourful hues added to the eye. Her sophisticated demeanour also helped to represent the ideal flawless image we tend to portray outwardly. I decided to place the “black eye” portion of the piece on the right eye to balance the left-heavy composition, to balance out the negative space present on the right side.
BLACK EYE
BROOKE LOWRY
SCHOOL HOUSE: Eberts
TITLE: Connected by Isolation
MEDIUM: Graphite and Pencil Crayon on Paper
Art has always been a big part of my life. Growing up as a dancer, I learned early on how to express my emotions without words. I’ve always been drawn to hands-on work, whether it’s painting, drawing, or designing outfits. I love creating artwork that reflects how I feel, my aesthetic, and how I view the world. Art class has given me the space to explore these passions and develop my own style. It’s where I slow down, get inspired, and bring my ideas to life. Art isn’t just something I do in class; it’s a part of who I am, and I dream of continuing to explore this passion as a designer one day.
Connected by Isolation depicts a crowded cityscape, zooming in on the lives of others while highlighting one person’s solitude in a vast, congested city. The piece explores loneliness and how we often overlook the struggles of those around us. Despite being surrounded by people, it encourages viewers to reflect on how disconnected we can feel and how little we truly know about what others are experiencing.
CONNECTED BY ISOLATION
IZABELLA MARZILLI
SCHOOL HOUSE: Taylor
TITLE: A World Divided
MEDIUM: Watercolour and Graphite on Paper
Art to me has always been a safe space and where I feel the most myself. Since I was little, from summer art camps to school classes, working on a project has never felt like work; it’s constantly been a source of happiness. Unlike other activities, art has never been stressful— it’s how I express who I am, clear my mind, and connect with what matters to me most.
A World Divided is a two-part, conceptual piece. One section was created with watercolour, while the other is a dark-shaded sketch. It is 18x16.5 in size. This artwork juxtaposes the two worlds: lush greenery compared to the worn-down, over-polluted factory. I purposely made the shaded sketch larger than the watercolour forest to emphasize the dominance of industrialization over nature. It focuses on the issue of pollution and industrialization, and how we are slowly decaying the earth’s beauty. It is hoped that this work educates the viewers and leads them to feel guilty about all the non-environmentally friendly actions they have taken part in.
A WORLD DIVIDED
SYDNEY M ac DONALD
SCHOOL HOUSE: Dunlap
TITLE: Bioessentialist Blood and Bone
MEDIUM: Oil and Mirrored acrylic on Canvas
I think art is an amazing concept. When I was younger, I remember thinking of photorealism as the peak of art from the attitudes older people had when viewing non-subjective art. However, as I learned art history and media analysis at school, I realized the various forms art can take. It is amazingly interesting how meaning is attributed to different aspects of a piece, and how political and economic influences affected art movements and time periods. Dedicating more of my time to art deconstructed my understanding of beauty, and challenged my symbolic understanding of objects through observation of objective forms. In all forms it takes, art is an amazing form of communication, a vessel for criticisms, joys, and creativity, and it’s a way to enjoy, interact with, and process the world around you.
I feel that our understandings of art are like our understandings of gender-- they both are equally fluid throughout time and are as meaningless as they are meaningful. They both only exist as they do today because of the lengthy history of influences that influenced them, and the way we express ourselves only has meaning to you if you decide it so. This piece is an exploration of my relationship with femininity growing up, and the conflictions of trying to distance myself from it through darker interests, wanting to explore it as a distinct concept from myself, the fears of being generalized, and the social pressures to conform. The mirror implicates you, as you are part of this society, part of the consensus that determines what femininity means, and part of the way it will socially affect me.
BIOESSENTIALIST BLOOD AND BONE
KITTY ZHANG
SCHOOL HOUSE: Dunlap
TITLE: Finale
MEDIUM: Glue, Watercolour and Paper
I didn’t take art seriously until grade nine. It was just something I did occasionally–something that felt nice but wasn’t important. When I first found out that I was ‘good’ at art, I was chasing the compliments that made me feel happy. Over time, something shifted. Rather than praise, I was chasing the feeling I got while making art. Compliments became a bonus, not the goal.
What started as doodles from an overactive imagination became so much more. The very process of making art – mixing colours, the feeling of it on paper, the sounds – has embedded itself deep in the very core of who I am. I love the way colour moves; the way it feels like a secret language only some people understand. It’s personal, private, but it’s also what connects me to others in a way I can’t explain.
Whether I’m making it or just admiring someone else’s, I love being surrounded by art and being tugged into a whole other world. It’s a fuzzy and dreamlike feeling that reminds me that art has truly become a part of me.
I choose the final scene in the fairytale, ‘The Steadfast Tin Soldier,’ and it’s the final part of my journey here at CDS, Finale seems to be the only fitting artwork. Since this was my experimental project, I decided to focus on a new technique called paper art. A lot of trial and error, a couple of hot glue mishaps and a desperate need for patience later, Finale was born. Despite the delicate process, everything worked exactly the way I envisioned in the end. Through this project, I have come to terms that no matter what happens, the good or bad, everything worked out because I made it happen. This piece showed me that true discovery lies in embracing the process to get to the outcome, trusting in the journey, and accepting each step. Even if it means getting a couple of burnt thumbs in the process.
Being able to express oneself and to communicate your ideas to society is the greatest achievement that the artist can attain.
Through this creative act, they explore their humanity, test their resiliency and enrich the lives of others.
Each year, the graduating class of art students continue to share their ideas through conceptual work, expand their horizons through their experimentations, and provide discourse through their discussions.
May Art remain a part of your life wherever your future takes you. Let it uplift your soul and help you to realize your dreams.
