Christine Lowe doesn’t just make paintings, she builds windows into feeling.
From her studio in Cape Breton, this Canadian artist turns memory, resilience, and the randomness of life into bold, tactile canvases that invite you closer. Her pieces are alive with colour — acrylic fields edged in raised lines you can almost feel beneath your fingers. It’s a style that recalls the certainty of stained glass while still leaving space for imagination to roam.
As an art critic, it’s rare to encounter work that feels so physically present while still whispering in the language of emotion. Lowe’s paintings have that pull. They live somewhere between the discipline of design and the freedom of pure expression, balancing precision with bursts of instinct. You can stand in front of them for minutes, even hours, and still find yourself asking: How does she manage to make colour itself feel alive?
She calls her art a “personal expression of feeling and connection.” You see it in the nostalgia threaded through her shapes, in the way she captures emotion without naming it outright. There’s something quietly fearless in that — an invitation for the viewer to bring their own story to the work, to complete the conversation she begins. The result is intimate, yet universal. These are paintings you don’t just look at; you step into.
Christine’s path to this moment hasn’t been a straight line. Born in Perth and raised in the small Ontario town of Almonte, she grew up surrounded by a tight-knit community but also with a view to the wider world. She trained in graphic design at Algonquin College, honing the discipline and technical skill that still underpin her compositions. Her early career took her to Ottawa, where she exhibited her work while balancing other creative roles.
But life has a way of rewriting plans. Christine lives with epilepsy — a condition that brings its own unpredictability and challenges. Rather than being sidelined by it, she’s turned that experience into a source of creative fuel. “Living with something that changes how you experience the world forces you to see differently,” she’s reflected in past interviews. That altered perspective — the ability to notice the quiet details, the subtle shifts in light and mood — is embedded in every canvas she creates.
When she eventually settled in Frenchvale, Nova Scotia, she found the space and pace she needed to fully immerse herself in her art. There, surrounded by rugged landscapes and a community that values craft, she refined her signature approach: raised outlines giving structure, with bold colour and organic forms breaking free within them. It’s a technique that manages to be both controlled and wildly expressive — a tension that mirrors her own life story.
For London’s collectors, curators, and gallery-goers, Lowe’s work offers something different. These aren’t pieces designed to match a sofa. They’re invitations — to feel, to remember, to stand still long enough for a painting to start speaking back. And in a city where contemporary art can sometimes veer into the conceptual at the expense of connection, her paintings are refreshingly human.
Spend time with one and you’ll notice the small things: a stroke that suggests a shoreline from childhood summers, a curve that recalls the shape of a familiar hand, a colour that somehow smells like autumn rain. Lowe’s paintings refuse to be passively consumed — they reach for you.
Her personal story is stitched into every piece. Over the years, Christine has worn many hats — designer, activist, artist — and each role has sharpened her ability to see the world from different angles. That empathy, coupled with her resilience, informs both the content and the texture of her work. She’s unafraid to put her lived reality on the canvas, not as confession, but as an offering.
For all their beauty, her paintings are not fragile things. They carry a certain grounded strength, a sense that they’ve been built to last. You can imagine them in a modern London loft or in a historic townhouse — anywhere that values art which is both striking and deeply felt.
As she continues to create from her studio in Cape Breton, Lowe’s reach is quietly expanding. Her collectors are finding her through exhibitions, online showcases, and word of mouth. And while she may be far from the bustle of London’s galleries, the emotional truth in her work speaks a language that travels easily across oceans.
In the end, Christine Lowe’s art isn’t about imposing a message. It’s about holding space for connection — between artist and viewer, between memory and imagination, between the precise lines we draw in life and the colour that spills beyond them.
For those willing to stand still and look, her paintings offer a rare gift: a reminder that feeling — in all its complexity — is worth making room for.
Collectors and galleries can view images of her stunning work here:
