About Liz

Liz Haney is a Canadian visual artist and painter whose practice explores the intersection of landscape, environmental change, and sensory perception. Through abstract painting, layered surfaces, material experimentation, and expressive mark-making, she investigates how memory, geology, and climate can be experienced beyond visual representation. Haney's work is informed by vibration, texture, movement, and alternative ways of perceiving the natural world, creating paintings that invite viewers to engage through multiple sensory pathways.

Haney holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting and Photography from York University and has continued her studies at the University of Toronto, Humber College, and the Art Gallery of Ontario. Raised in a family of artists, she developed a lifelong interest in the expressive possibilities of landscape and abstraction.

She has worked with the curatorial and education departments at the Art Gallery of Ontario, contributing to exhibitions, youth programming, and tactile tours for blind and partially sighted visitors. These experiences continue to shape her commitment to accessibility, experimentation, and expanding how contemporary painting can be experienced.

Haney has exhibited nationally and internationally with organizations including Sweet Art (London, UK), Kunst am Rampe Gallery (Frankfurt, Germany), the Albright-Knox Art Gallery (Buffalo, USA), and the Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto, Canada). Her work is represented by Hafta Frame It Gallery in Toronto and Koyman Galleries in Ottawa.

Haney is the recipient of the Canada Council for the Arts Explore and Create Professional Development Grant (2024), which supported a painting residency in Tuscany, Italy, where she studied with Spanish painter and mentor Carlos San Millán. This experience marked the beginning of an ongoing artistic mentorship focused on abstraction, material exploration, and contemporary painting practices. In 2026, she was awarded the Chalmers Professional Development Grant to continue this mentorship through an intensive painting workshop in France, expanding her research into abstraction, natural pigments, geological materials, and multisensory approaches to painting.

She is also the recipient of an Ontario Arts Council Creation Grant for Petrichor (2025), a multisensory body of work exploring climate change through the effects of flooding, wildfire, storms, and environmental transformation. Her current series, The Shape of Sound (2026) investigates Deaf perception, vibration, and the material language of painting, while her forthcoming project, Salt Road (2027) expands this inquiry through artistic collaborations in France and Canada. Combining material research, natural pigments, and multisensory approaches to painting, Salt Road examines how contemporary painting can communicate across languages, cultures, landscapes, and diverse sensory experiences.