Studio Visit with Gord Bond: The Mess Makers and Their Associates
Studio Visit: Gord Bond’s The Mess Makers and Their Associates
Exhibition: July 10–27 | Opening Reception: July 10
When we visited Gord Bond’s studio in the lead-up to his upcoming exhibition, The Mess Makers and Their Associates, we were welcomed into a world where humour, precision, and memory collide. Before we spoke about the new work, Bond shared the origin story of his practice.
Raised in a creatively rich environment, Bond grew up watching his mother—an accomplished muralist and landscape painter—navigate the world with a brush in hand. He accompanied her to job sites and absorbed her love for plein air painting during cottage trips near Parry Sound. His family are accomplished creatives and enthusiastic supporters of the arts, but Bond initially set his sights on science, attending McMaster University for general science. It wasn’t until later that he pivoted to art—with the full support of his family.
Bond’s current work merges formal discipline with expressive play. Though trained in classical portraiture and landscape, he resists staying within a genre. His compositions often begin with observation—family moments, friendly anecdotes, children’s toys and stories—but are transformed through layers of drawing, painting, erasure, and redirection.
He constructs each image using a set of recurring motifs that function both symbolically and compositionally. Insects, flowers, and cartoon limbs emerge not only for their narrative potential but for their ability to anchor space, redirect the eye, or create formal balance. He describes his process as both intuitive and architectural—deciding where an image “needs weight,” then finding the right element to provide it. The result is work that is visually dense, emotionally open, and structurally sound.
In The Mess Makers and Their Associates, Bond draws directly from his life as a father and partner, embracing sentimentality. He builds worlds where abstraction and reference meet, and where viewers are free to find their own stories in the mess.
CLICK HERE TO RECEIVE AN ADVANCE PREVIEW OF "THE MESS MAKERS AND THEIR ASSOCIATES"
About the Artist:
Gord Bond grounds his artistic practice in his love of painting. Despite the outwardly figurative and representational appearance of his works, Bond considers his practice as predominantly abstract.
Through a responsive approach, the forms in Bond’s works become the product of compositional decisions made intuitively throughout the painting process while their surfaces reflect his dedication to creating interesting textures and playing with colour. Through intentional playfulness and humour, Bond wishes to create animated paintings that connect with a wide breadth of viewers.
Bond holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from McMaster University, Hamilton, and a Masters of Fine Art from York University, Toronto. His work is found in the public collection of McMaster University and private collections across Canada and internationally in the United States and United Kingdom.