2026 Visual Arts Exhibition
The 2026 Visual Arts Exhibition program on display at Town Centre Park Community Centre (1207 Pinetree Way) from September 2026 until March 2027, aims to highlight local artists’ talents. The artwork created reflect the theme of City Life: Art Inspired by Urban Living.
This opportunity was open to emerging artists aged 16+, residing in the Metro Vancouver area, with preference given to Coquitlam-based artists. All artists featured in this exhibition have been selected by a jury.
Artist Biography
Amy Siddaway is a visual artist who lives and works in the Tri-Cities, B.C. She works in many mediums, primarily encaustic, wax pastels, watercolour, gouache and acrylic. She enjoys photography and is constantly collecting inspiration from the world around her. Amy prides herself on being a self-taught artist, as she feels that her personal style, intrinsic curiosity, and authentic sense-of-self is reflected in her work.
Description of Artwork
Coquitlam City Centre, 2026
Mixed media
Coquitlam City Centre, explores the quiet connections between communities and the landscapes that surround them. Through this work, Amy highlights the beauty of our everyday and implores the viewer to search out snippets of wonder within our cities.
Artist Biography
Annette Varghese is a Coquitlam based, self-taught acrylic painter with a background in accounting and finance. Following her move from Mumbai, India to North America, her dedication to painting intensified. Annette finds inspiration in the great outdoors and through mundane subjects, and is deeply moved that her art has found a place in people's personal collections.
Description of Artwork
Beauty in the Busy, 2019
Acrylic on canvas
Beauty in the Busy portrays city life, showcasing the everyday rhythm, congestion and the fast-paced nature of urban living. The monotonous stoplight scene, highlights the crowded spaces, maintenance of order, shared disconnect, and green space that brings a sense of calm to the chaos. This painting was inspired by a photograph that Annette took while waiting at a traffic light.
Artist Biography
Colinda Parker is a visual artist living in Coquitlam. She studied painting at The Alberta College of Art before moving to the Vancouver area and has been exhibited at various local locations. She is skilled in oil paintings, colored pencil drawings, photography that includes special effects, and other modes of creative art.
Description of Artwork
Opening Night, 2019
Oil on canvas paper
Opening Night, is inspired by Colinda’s passion for gardening. Curious to see if moonflowers and morning glories could thrive in an urban setting, she placed them in her high-rise window and photographed the brief moment when the moonflowers bloomed in the evening. She later transformed this fleeting encounter into a painting, highlights how beauty can flourish in unexpected places.
Artist Biography
Daniela Petrenko is a trained artist with a bachelor’s degree in illustration from Emily Carr University of Art+Design. Her work is influenced by nature and poetry and discusses topics of mental health, neurodiversity and spirituality.
Description of Artwork
Find Me, 2025
Oil on canvas
Find Me reflects city life through the intimate, often unseen exchanges that occur between strangers within urban neighborhoods. Rooted in Daniela’s experience of canvassing door to door, this work discusses how the city can transform into an active psychological and social environment. Before each knock, Daniela felt heightened anxiety and an awareness of intrusion and rejection. Yet Daniela’s encounters disrupted that assumption as strangers responded with openness, patience, and generosity.
Artist Biography
Coquitlam-raised artist Dilys Huang has enjoyed creating art from a young age. With a background in urban planning, her ink and watercolour sketches tend to focus on buildings, cities, and the urban landscape. She draws much of her inspiration from what she sees and places she has been or travelled to. Besides working on her own art, Dilys enjoys being involved in the local community, including exploring the city and doing urban sketching with other fellow planners and sketchers.
Description of Artwork
Heart of the City, 2026
Ink and watercolour
Sketched on location, Heart of the City captures the view at the intersection of Pinetree Way and Northern Avenue, the gateway into the heart of Coquitlam's downtown core. This ink and watercolour urban sketch aims to convey the hustle and bustle of this lively mixed-use area. This piece showcases familiar landmarks, including Lincoln SkyTrain Station and City Centre Library, various modes of transportation, wide boulevards and sidewalks, and the ever coming and going of pedestrians.
Artist Biography
Din is a painter whose work explores urban environments, natural landscapes, and lived experience. Growing up in Bosnia, Din was recognized early on as an artist and commissioned to complete a mural in his hometown. This early civic experience left a lasting impression on his understanding of how art can exist within and respond to everyday city life. Din’s work is reinforced with the technical precision of his engineering background and examines how environments are shaped by movement, nature, and memory.
Description of Artwork
Where The City Exhales, 202
Oil on canvas
Where The City Exhales, examines how the urban experience is shaped by both physical environments and personal history. This work shows how people use shared infrastructure and public space for movement, recreation, and social interaction, and makes the viewer question how individual histories contribute to the way urban spaces are used, understood, and lived in.
din.pekaric@gmail.com
Artist Biography
Originally from Japan, Haruyo Izumi is a nature photography enthusiast who finds her greatest inspiration in the unique landscape of Coquitlam. She loves exploring the local trails and green spaces where the urban and the wild meet. She is drawn to the way the seasons shift in British Columbia and finds a familiar comfort in the changing colours of the Pacific Northwest. Coquitlam is an amazing place to live because of its rare and beautiful balance between city life and the natural world. For her, photography allows her to honour nature - from the smallest garden detail to the towering trees that define the Coquitlam skyline.
Description of Artwork
Red Leaves of Coquitlam, 2025
Photography
This photograph, Red Leaves of Coquitlam, captures a familiar path in Town Centre Park, Coquitlam, where many people pass through in their daily lives. She has walked this path countless times, watching the trees move through their seasons and seeing how their colours change with time. Just before all the leaves fall, their red hues reach their peak, creating a moment that feels vivid, warm, and full of life. This place also holds personal memories for her, as her family have grown alongside this walkway over the years. Through this image, she hopes viewers are reminded that even on a busy day, we can pause, look around, and notice the beauty of nature that has always been there
Artist Biography
Min Joyce Abraham was born in Shanghai, China, moved to Canada in 1979 and pursues her passion for painting in Coquitlam, B.C. From the first brushstroke to the final step of framing, her approach is based on traditional Chinese techniques. Her aim is to capture the essence of a subject, rather than to create a realistic representation.
Description of Artwork
Steps Woven Together, 2025
Ink with coloured water on paper
Steps Woven Together captures the rhythm of daily urban life. The couple’s unhurried walk, mirrors how Coquitlam’s residents can choose to seek moments of closeness within the beauty of the city’s public spaces. Min’s technique starts with using black ink to outline elements and is followed with watercolor paint – the technique bringing her paintings to life.
Artist Biography
Kai Lye is a multimedia artist from Coquitlam BC, and a current student of KPU's Fashion Design and Fine Arts Program. Working mostly with acrylics, Kai tries to create pieces that tell a complex story without the need for text. With their work, they invite the viewer to seek out a story, piecing details together within the art.
Description of Artwork
Jump/Do A Flip, 2024
Acrylic
Jump/Do A Flip, explores feelings of isolation within a crowded city. In this work, the city is depicted through the grandeur of its lights, shadows, and looming buildings. Rather than drawing the viewers’ attention to the figure itself, the subjects shadow becomes the focal point, reflecting on how, even when surrounded by others, we can find ourselves furthest from who we are.
Artist Biography
Jennifer Peng is a Chinese Canadian multimedia artist from Coquitlam BC. She has received a Diploma in Fine Arts from Langara College and is currently pursuing a BFA in Visual Arts at Emily Carr University of Art + Design. She has participated in many group shows including Coquitlam's 2024 Visual Arts Exhibition. Jennifer finds inspiration in transitions and the spaces between the suburban and natural.
Description of Artwork
Scatter, 2025
Oil and acrylic
Scatter, depicts Jennifer’s imagination about working and living on Burke Mountain and how nature and the environment permeate our everyday experiences. In this work, she discusses her perceptions of everyday life in Coquitlam, and how these perceptions inspire ambiguous emotional or spiritual reactions.
Artist Biography
Sandra Zamora Nacar was born in Vancouver, Canada and raised in the Tri-Cities. Creativity has always been central to her life, whether through painting, writing, poetry or sewing. Although her practice spans multiple disciplines, painting remains her passion and the foundation of her artistic expression.
Description of Artwork
Built To Last, 2026
Acrylic paint & pens on canvas
Built To Last, draws inspiration from Art Deco style to explore hockey as an integral rhythm of urban life. Through its lines and bold contrasts, it depicts the overlap of city structure, sport and routine. Inspired by progress and strength, this piece showcases the hockey parent not as background support, but as a central force within the daily choreography.
Artist Biography
Wendy Anderson has been an Art Educator at Evergreen Arts in Coquitlam for over 20 years. She holds a Bachelor of Design from Alberta University of the Arts, and enjoys creating in a wide variety of media from drawing to weaving and watercolours. Passionate about public art and community engagement, Wendy enjoys inspiring others through her teaching and creative practice.
Description of Artwork
Home Alone, 2020
Red grease pencil on paper
Home Alone, reflects on how our homes became our containers of safety during the early days of the COVID 19 pandemic. It was during this time, Wendy discovered drawing with a red grease pencil. It felt familiar like a crayon, but the singular colour allowed her to more easily explore creating space within the two-dimensional plane. This artwork reflects on the close proximity of our homes, while highlighting how we can still feel isolated - a sensation that might ring true at many moments in life.