Through digital collages of fragmented spaces, Sylvia creates subtle narratives and
reflective observations on our shifting landscapes.
Sylvia Trotter Ewens is a Honduran-Canadian painter based in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal, Canada. She earned a DEC in Fine Arts from Dawson College (2014) and a Bachelor of Fine Arts with a major in Painting and Drawing from Concordia University (2018). After several years of refining her practice and exhibiting her work, she returned to Concordia to complete a Master of Fine Arts in Painting (2024).
Trotter Ewens has been recognized with numerous awards, including The Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant, the Claude F. Lefebvre Scholarship, the Shirley Reed Graduate Scholarship, and the Lillian Vineberg Graduate Award. Her work has been featured in both solo and group exhibitions at venues such as the Maison de la Culture NDG Botrel Gallery (2024), Warren G. Flowers Art Gallery (2024), Future Fair in New York (2024), Art Mûr (2023), and ARTCH (2020), among others.
Through collaged compositions of fragmented spaces, Trotter Ewens constructs subtle narratives and contemplative reflections on shifting landscapes. Her work examines these transformations through the lenses of climate concerns, environmental initiatives, and urban design. Walking, observing, photography, and writing form the foundation of her creative process, guiding the development of each piece. Drawing from her own writings, she captures urban architecture and natural landscapes, photographing both interior and exterior elements. These images are then decontextualized-torn, distorted, and reconstructed into imagined environments that she translates into painting.
Her compositions blend architectural aesthetics, ecological discourse, and personal narrative, creating spaces that are both tangible and psychologically evocative. Trotter Ewens' paintings incorporate gardens, structures, pollution, light, nature, and open spaces, often interrupted by visible points of facture and residue that disrupt the image's resolution. These interruptions serve as visual metaphors for the continuous transformation of our environments. By reimagining and redesigning these spaces, she explores the psychological shifts that occur within them, ultimately questioning how we perceive, interact with, and reshape the world around us.