Doug Thorburn
My formal fine arts training includes two years at langara college in Vancouver, and two years at DTUC here in Nelson. I have been involved in similar informal drawing sessions since moving back to the Kootenays in the late 80’s. These sessions have taken place in a variety of venues from the SUB building on the CIC campus, to people’s living rooms. The current Oxygen sessions carry on this tradition of volunteer led, community based life drawing sessions.
Deryn Collier has dreamed of writing mystery novels since reading her first Nancy Drew in the second grade. Her most recent work, A Real Somebody, is a novel of gentle suspense set in Montreal in 1947. She has written two previous novels, Confined Space, which was nominated for a Best First Novel award by the Crime Writers of Canada, and Open Secret.
Natasha Bucheit is a Canadian artist from Tiohtià:ke ( Montreal ). She completed a Fine Art MA at the University of Edinburgh in 2023. Her practice takes the form of installations that combine drawing, metalwork and printmaking. Recently, she has been experimenting with camera-less photography and using eco-friendly processes in the darkroom and strives to align her practice with sustainable creation methods.
Kaylyn Hardstaff is an Edmonton born artist who moved to Nelson in August 2025. She graduated in April 2023 from NSCAD University’s Fine Arts Program in Halifax, Nova Scotia and has just finished a year of travel abroad.
Kaylyn’s work explores themes of anxiety, particularly how experiences of panic, fleeting time, and precarious moments manifest in everyday life and in her artistic practice. A central focus of her practice is the evolving concept of “home”: what defines it, how it can provide grounding in times of emotional turbulence, and how art can serve as a tool to create a sense of belonging in unfamiliar environments.
Her practice spans drawing, painting, printmaking, sculpture, writing, and installation, often blending these mediums to create work that is intimate, reflective, and grounded in personal narrative.
@k_hardstaff_art
Emilie Leblanc Kromberg started her practice in the applied arts and has been a professional artist since 2010. Materials, their transformation and ancient techniques were aspects that ignited the spark that brought Emilie to work with metals, textiles and clay. Goldsmith by trade, she explored the subject of adornment by the making and selling of her jewellery in art shows across Canada.
Since studying Fine Art in the Netherlands at the ArtEZ AKI Academy for Arts & Design, her work has expanded out of the 3-dimensional form to incorporate painting, photography, video and sound. Through the exploration of these new mediums in tandem to her initial disciplines she seeks to investigate the multi-faceted bonds between human and object.
Keiko Lee-Hem’s art practice allows her to slow down and slip into the present moment, escaping the busy-ness and distraction of the modern world and the digital life of her day job. Her practice allows her quality time noticing, savouring and recording the exquisite design and detail of her natural surroundings and helps her cope with sadness and anxiety caused by the passing of time, made evident by the waxing and waning of her garden and the growing up of her child on a changing planet. Keiko holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Emily Carr University, which formed the foundation for her work today as a freelance graphic designer. In recent years she returned to the tactile experience of drawing, paper cut and printmaking, partly as a way to escape the digital realm, but also as a means for savouring the seasonal beauty of her natural surroundings, and for arresting the passage of time.
Rayya Liebich (she/her) is a writer and educator of Lebanese and Polish descent. She is the author of the award-winning chapbook Tell Me Everything (Beret Day Press) and full-length poetry collection Min Hayati (Inanna Publications). Passionate about writing as a tool for transformation and changing the discourse on grief, she believes in the power of words to change minds and hearts and in the responsibility of artists to be truth tellers and to record poems as a testimony to history. A finalist in 7 CNF contests in the past two years including the CBC Nonfiction Prize, she is the 2022 winner of The International Amy MacRae Award for Memoir, and, The Federation Of BC Writers Literary Contest.
www.rayyaliebich.com @rayliebich
Rose Nielsen is a poet, songwriter, and fiction writer and has published work online and in print journals such as CV2, Open Minds Quarterly, 3Elements, DoveTales/Writing for Peace, and in an anthology of Mississippi River poetry, Down to the Dark River. Rose is also a musician with two recordings of original music, and a physiotherapist. As well as a BSc, she has an MFA in Creative Writing from UBC, and diplomas for Instructor of Adult Education, and in Mental Health and Addictions, and a diploma in Dream Work from Haden Institute in North Carolina. She is presently a doctoral candidate for Dream Work Guidance.
Myra Rasmussen is a community engaged artist, who focuses on the role of festivals and celebrations in bringing people together. Originally trained in sculpture, she graduated from Wesleyan University in 2004, where she was awarded a degree in studio arts with high honors. Since 2009, she has been based in Nelson, British Columbia, where she is the artistic director of the Polka Dot Dragon Arts Society, which focuses on creating multidisciplinary events that link the arts, nature, and community. In addition to her work with festivals, she also has extensive experience with lino and woodblock printmaking and is part of the ink + moon calendar collective. She teaches in schools through the ArtStarts program and at the Oxygen Art Centre.
Marceline Tanguay
Hello, my name is Marceline and I have worked in the Animation industry for over 15 years. My most recent work was story boarding for the movies Dog Man, Gabby’s Dollhouse and Puss in Boots 2 at Dreamworks Animation. I also did storyboarding for Cartoon Network, and created many Character designs for Pixar, Warner Brothers, Sony, BlueSky and Paramount Studios. I studied at Sheridan College in Animation and wish to bring back fast-pace costumed life drawing to help everyone enhance their skills in drawing fast, which can be applied to all art related disciplines.
Josh Wapp has been a professional cartoonist for over 25 years. He has worked for various print media, magazines, newspapers, ad art, and more recently a comic book, and is currently doing live caricature art, outside, during the warmer months in Nelson. He has taught numerous cartooning workshops for mostly children at Quilchena Elementary School in Vancouver, in Nelson at the former Ramsay’s Art Supplies, Oxygen Art Centre, and through the RDCK. Too see examples his work and for more info go to: www.joshwapp.ca