A northwestern Ontario arts and speaker series event focused on grief, memory, and healing, featuring artist Leanne Nicholson. This session explores how loss reshapes the body, work, and identity, and how art becomes a practice of holding experience that cannot be fully expressed in language.
June Speaker Series With Local Artist Leanne Nicholson
June’s artist speaker series session features a reflection on grief, memory, and what it means to continue after profound loss with local Melgund Township artist Leanne Nicholson.
A sister is gone, and nothing after that remains unchanged. Grief does not settle or resolve—it moves through the body, reshapes attention, and alters how life, work, and creative practice are experienced over time. It can be physical, emotional, and deeply disruptive, often in ways that are unpredictable and ongoing.
The session explores grief as something lived rather than completed, and considers how loss reorganizes daily life, relationships, and the body itself. It also looks at different forms of grief—sudden, expected, collective, and prolonged—and how each carries its own emotional and physical impact, unfolding in distinct and non-linear ways.
Art as healing and expression is present throughout as a way of engaging what cannot be fully articulated. It offers a means of holding memory and experience without forcing clarity or resolution.
Space will be held for reflection and, if participants wish, for shared storytelling in a respectful and supportive environment.
Join us
Sunday June 7, 2026 from 1-3 p.m.
Dyment Recreation Hall Lower Level Art Space
Melgund Township, Northwestern Ontario
For video conferencing link, please contact us: info@artsincubator.ca
About the Speaker
Born in Red Lake and deeply connected to northwestern Ontario, Leanne Nicholson is a social worker and artist whose practice is shaped by the land around her. She spent much of her childhood at her family’s cabin on McKenzie Island, where time in nature fostered a lasting relationship with the land that continues to inform her work. Leanne works across visual and mixed-media practices, creating wildlife imagery and pieces incorporating antlers, bones, and skulls. Her work transforms natural materials into expressions of life, memory, and continuity, grounded in respect for the animals and the stories they carry.
Art has also been a vital form of expression for Leanne personally, helping her navigate experiences of depression when language was not accessible. That emotional depth carries through her work, which often explores resilience, reflection, and connection. She often integrates her artistic practice into her work as a social worker, where creativity continues to support connection, reflection, and healing in the communities she serves. Her creative process is rooted in time spent in the forest, gathering what she describes as “gifts from nature” that form the basis of her work. Her practice blends land-based knowledge with contemporary visual art, using organic materials and symbolic imagery.
About the Author
