Chanel DesRoches is a painter and printmaker based in Guelph, Ontario. She holds a Master of Fine Arts from York University (2024), and a Bachelor of Arts, Honours in Studio Art from the School of Fine Art & Music at the University of Guelph (2019). Over the last few years, Chanel has been researching theory and methodology around abstraction through queer studies, deviance, societal issues, anxiety, and resilience. More recently, she's been working on engaging other methods in her practice, such as muscle memory. Expressed in her painting, she often leans on deflection tactics as an easy escape and avoidance strategy in social interactions or conversations that provoke dialogue and reflection from her younger self. Her practice informs the acts of pretending and reacting to each mark, gesture, colour, and form – the removal from reality and the creation of a new in-between, something that can be revised, reimagined, and repeated. Driving from personal experience, Chanel relentlessly engages with painting in the moment, allowing herself to interchangeably utilize intuition and compulsion as a means for mark making.
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Chanel is the owner and director of Necessary Arts Collective, located in Downtown Guelph. The space offers rentable studio's at varying sizes and price points for artists in all career stages. Having a passion for supporting the emerging arts community, Chanel targets early career artists looking to ease into a studio-based practice while maintaining inclusivity, diversity, safety, and affordability as a top priority. The studio includes a ready-to-work environment offering 24/7 access, wifi, white walls, spare storage, kitchenette, bathrooms, etc. Through this, Chanel was able to additionally launch a project space called "N/A Gallery" that introduces a non-intimidating bite-size gallery experience for artists. N/A Gallery is situated along the studios front floor-to-ceiling windows so viewers can productively see, enjoy, and talk about the work at any point in time.
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