The highest honour at TOAF
Best of Art Fair goes to Cheryl Rock
It is my absolute pleasure to reintroduce you to Cheryl Rock and highlight her artistic merit and highest achievement at TOAF. Cheryl is the 2023 recipient of the Catherine Bratty Award for Best of Art Fair.
Cheryl Rock’s works honour oral traditions and shared human experiences. She is known for her striking profile silhouettes that blend iconic imagery with technical proficiency and awe-inspiring craftsmanship. Her latest series, “Prosper, intricately weaves foliage, gold accents, and imagery to tell stories of resilience and collective humanity.
Rock’s work has been shown at The Royal Ontario Museum and galleries around the city. A multi-award recipient– Cheryl’s journey at the Fair has been filled with many milestones and joyful memories: Best of 2D Works in both 2019 and 2020, alongside the prestigious Mayor’s Purchase Award in 2020 that brought her work to the City’s permanent art collection.
The Catherine Bratty Award for Best of Art Fair is generously supported by The Rudolph P. Bratty Family Foundation. Thank you for their ongoing support of artistic excellence.
I can’t wait to see who will receive this year’s Best of Art Fair, along with all the other exceptional artists in this year’s Fair. We’ll announce the 2024 artist roster in the coming weeks—keep your eyes peeled! You’re going to love the work.
Enjoy the Spring blossoms????
TOAF Asks: What does TOAF mean to you?
“As a Black Artist, I feel seen and heard. I consider TOAF an investment in myself, my creative praxis, my future…Participating in TOAF has been one of my goals since graduating with a degree in Fine Arts. TOAF is more than an art fair, it is a movement! Sharing space with so many incredible artists has enhanced my journey as a professional artist and given me immense confidence to keep moving forward with my creative endeavours.”
—Cheryl Rock, Recipient of the Catherine Bratty Award for Best of Art Fair at TOAF62
Hear from the Judge
What Andrew Hunder says about Cheryl Rock’s Work
“Cheryl Rock’s work draws on a lifetime of engagement with materials, image making and considered content, first developed in painting with assemblage/collage into her signature work based on the delicate cutting and manipulating of printed paper and synthetic industrial fabric. Reflecting an informed immersion in Afro-Futurism, she creates a portraiture of embodied Blackness spanning generations and time. “I have always been and artist, a maker, since childhood,” she told me, and the energy of her educator’s understanding and empathy for youth feels intensely concentrated in these works. Cheryl Rock’s art is elegant, beautiful, deeply emotive and haunting; her growing community of individuals are imagined through dialogue with materials that often project off the surface, in cuts and folds, found patterns and subtle gestures, at times floating in space. The work exudes an accomplished understanding of transitioning between surface and space, gesture and texture. A stand out presence among a remarkably strong gathering of artists at TOAF this year, her work is enhanced by her generousity and clarity when engaging with the public.”
—Andrew Hunter, Author, Artist, Curator & Activist
