Lori Ridgeway is an Ottawa-based oil painter whose abstracted landscapes explore the rhythms of line, light, and shadow in the near-natural world. With a foundation in design theory and continuous study under leading artists, her work reflects a deep engagement with structure and perception. Drawing from the Canadian Shield and local terrain, Ridgeway creates layered, intuitive compositions that reveal the extraordinary within the overlooked details of place.Lori Ridgeway is a landscape oil painter, originally from Alberta now living in Ottawa, Ontario. Her paintings are inspired mainly by the forest, grasses marshes and shorelines mainly in and around Ottawa or the Canadian Shield. Her focus is on expressing patterns of line, shapes, colour, and especially light and shadow in the near landscape – complexity that lies below the superficial and, often, everyday notice, but which forms the coherent whole. Her artistic goal is to express extraordinary moments from ordinary scenes and generate a new way of seeing our surroundings. Her paintings have been accepted into juried shows locally, regionally, nationally and internationally and have won jury awards, including five Best in Show awards, four of them in 2023 and 2024, all from different paintings. She is an elected member of the Society of Canadian Artists.
Lori began her interest in art in High School, where she was active in the visual and other arts. She focused on ink and wash paintings, which were often chosen for international traveling student shows. While planning a career in design, her long professional career ultimately took a much different turn, but she never lost sight her love and fascination for art. She spent many long hours on the edges of her international career in galleries and art neighbourhoods in North America and around the world, which influenced and refined her aesthetic taste. Her non-art professional career was focussed on looking beyond the superficial to understand, embrace and integrate the complexity of issues — often less understood or overlooked — to find solutions. This interest has shaped both her eye and artistic intellect as well. After retirement in 2013, Lori returned to painting, this time in oil. (She has also sold works done in ink). As part of an aggressive self-directed continuous-learning plan, she initially followed foundational classes at the Ottawa School of Art, but then expanded to a steady association with the Winslow Art Centre (Seattle WA) and many other workshops, courses and discussions by, and with, diverse top Canadian and international artists. Her focus has been on understanding design and colour theory, best practices in painting processes and philosophies,
abstraction, lessons from past Masters, and how they can inform her own artistic intuition and process, all while developing and maintaining her individual artistic voice. Her continuous learning philosophy has been to create a better-informed intuition, keener observation (i.e., ‘the more you understand, the more you see’) and structured ‘troubleshooting’, which has been commended by peers. She has been invited to speak to other artists on her successful learning journey by several Ontario Art Associations.
Lori is an elected member of the Society of Canadian Artists and supporting member of the Federation of Canadian Artists (both National and Ontario Chapter), as well as an active member of the East Central Ontario Art Association, the West Carleton Arts Society, and two other local Ottawa Societies. Her paintings have been accepted into local, regional, national and international juried exhibitions and group shows. Her work has won several Jury awards including five ‘Best in Show’ awards (four of them in
2023 and 2024). Her work is represented by Koyman Galleries in Ottawa.
Artist Statement
I am a landscapes oil painter living in Ottawa, Ontario. However, my interest and aesthetic was mainly shaped by my years spent in the high backcountry of the Rocky Mountains. It is where I first explicitly thought about the dazzle of light and shadow, colour and even scent and sound that created my sense and memory of immediate
‘place’, which stopped me in my tracks as often or more so than the incomparable vistas. This sense of ‘immediate place’ remains the source of my painting inspiration
where I now live. My creative focus on the nearer landscape is also the result of years of professional immersion in making sense and order from the complexity that underlies
superficial impressions, rather than overlooking it. I want to share how I see the patterns in nature and landscape revealed by lines, shapes, colour and light and shadow — the very weft and warp of the fabric of our surroundings. I want to capture and amplify, through mark making and colour, that which often escapes everyday notice — the contrasts of line and gesture, positive and negative shapes and colour to create interest, texture, depth and movement in my paintings. I am more interested in the push and pull of colour and shape for depth than the traditional perspectives of distant vistas. Increasingly, colour, light and rhythm is my actual subject. My impressions draw especially from trees, branches, grasses, and shorelines, including reflections, with a goal to make extraordinary moments from ordinary ones. I use traditional oil paints to amplify marks and various forms of contrast to draw the eye on a path that is intended to be savoured slowly, but which ultimately adds to a whole. My paintings are intended to be abstracted but believable. I paint mainly in medium or large format.
