Reception for Emily Conlon: Desire Paths

Save the Date: Emily Conlon, RBC Emerging Artist in Residence, will soon be concluding her residency at AWE, and we look forward to installing her incredible work at Dry Goods Gallery in an exhibition entitled Emily Conlon: Desire Paths The exhibition will be seen in the window at Dry Goods on Drouillard Rd. from January 23, 2026 – March 28, 2026.

Join us on Friday, January 30th from 5pm-7pm at Dry Goods for an opening reception.

Emily Conlon is a multidisciplinary artist based in Windsor, Ontario. She holds an MFA in Studio Art from the University of Saskatchewan and a BFA Honours in Visual Arts from the University of Windsor. Working primarily in drawing and printmaking, Emily’s intuitive process explores the relationship between memory and place through non-linear visual narratives that reflect nature’s rhythms. Emily has exhibited across Canada and internationally. Her work has most recently been featured in exhibitions at John B. Aird Gallery (Toronto, ON) and Site:Brooklyn (Brooklyn, NY). In 2025, Emily received the Best of Paper Award at the Toronto Outdoor Art Fair. 

Image: Emily Conlon, Desire Paths (detail), 2026.

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The 2025 RBC Emerging Artist in Residence is generously sponsored by the RBC Foundation’s Emerging Artist Project.

Meet the Artist: Emily Conlon

Emily Conlon is a multidisciplinary artist based in Windsor, Ontario. She holds an MFA in Studio Art from the University of Saskatchewan and a BFA Honours in Visual Arts from the University of Windsor. Working primarily in drawing and printmaking, Emily’s intuitive process explores the relationship between memory and place through non-linear visual narratives that reflect nature’s rhythms. Emily has exhibited across Canada and internationally. Her work has most recently been featured in exhibitions at John B. Aird Gallery (Toronto, ON) and Site:Brooklyn (Brooklyn, NY). In 2025, Emily received the Best of Paper Award at the Toronto Outdoor Art Fair. 

Artist Statement
My practice is motivated by a desire to document personal experiences within natural spaces to serve as a form of remembrance and preservation. I interpret my surroundings similarly to how one recalls memories – non-linear, fragmented, concealed, and sometimes reduced to shapes and patterns. My work aims to translate states of decay and impermanence into something tangible and reimagined.

I primarily work with printmaking and drawing, mediums that allow my process to be intuitive and take shape as a form of note-taking and personal reflection. The physicality of printmaking and the act of embedding an image into a surface allows me to transform these fleeting experiences into something tactile and permanent. Repetition and pattern allow me to tie my work to bodily rhythms such as steps, breaths, or heart beats, further connecting the subject matter to the passage of time and the human experience. My work engages with a push and pull between presence and absence. While placing importance on what is seen, I also acknowledge what is missing or eroded, negative space and absence of imagery permit a void in which viewers can shape their own narratives.

By honing in on intangible moments in overlooked pockets of natural spaces and viewing them through the lens of memory, I aim to garner closer relationships between the viewer and their surroundings and create a visual language that has the capacity to generate new narratives beyond initial encounters.