Cody Houle: "Zaagigi | Growth " October 2 - 26, 2025

In anticipation of his upcoming solo exhibition Zagigi | Growth, we chatted with Cody Houle about taking solace in painting, the resilience of human spirit and why he is painting mountains on repeat. Zaagigi | Growth opens at the Art Gallery of Hamilton's Art Sales + Services on October 2 and runs through October 26, 2025.

Cody Houle exudes ease and charm as he saunters into the gallery, seemingly without a care in the world. His happy-go-lucky demeanor stands in stark contrast to the challenges he has faced throughout his life—challenges he credits with shaping his development as an artist and contributing to his positive outlook today.

Houle began painting less than a decade ago, inspired by the television icon Bob Ross. “I was just so captivated—watching how he could systematically build a landscape from a formula. A lightbulb went off.” Much like following a cooking show, Houle immediately took up painting. “I painted mountains over and over again. I probably painted hundreds of them.”

As he continued to paint prolifically, Houle began studying the techniques of historical artists whose processes fascinated him: the scraping of Gerhard Richter, the frenzied drips of Jackson Pollock, the textured layers of Jean-Paul Riopelle, and the gestural marks of Franz Kline. But most notably, he found deep resonance with the transfigurative imagery of Norval Morrisseau.

Houle, of French and Anishinaabek ancestry, grew up in North Bay removed from his ancestral culture. As a youth, he recalls seeing Morrisseau’s work in the window of a local gallery and later becoming transfixed by the Ojibwe artist’s story. Houle's father was displaced at a young age by the Children’s Aid Society after his grandmother was killed, and lost connection with his culture and community. Both of Houle's parents struggled with lifelong substance abuse, and Houle was brought up in an unsafe environment mired by addition, poverty and violence. Without a strong cultural foundation, Houle grew up feeling confused and ashamed of his Indigenous identity.

In his early years as a painter, Houle took to the streets to sell his work. He would line up his paintings on the ground and sell them for $20 each. This immediate connection—between his art and the people who engaged with it—became his motivation to envision a larger future for his practice. Today, Cody paints to free his soul and to serve as an example for his daughter and for Indigenous youth: someone who is courageously transforming relationships—through art—with identity, culture, and family members who are no longer here and who never had the chance to make sense of or share their own stories.

The exhibition title, Zaagigi, is Anishinaabemowin for "growth"—specifically, the kind of growth that emerges just after sowing. For Cody Houle, this first major solo exhibition represents exactly that: a powerful emergence.