COURTNEY
DOOKWAH

Courtney Dookwah is a multidisciplinary artist based in Toronto and Montreal, Canada. She is a fine art student at Concordia University in the Art Education program.

Her artistic practice explores the materiality of storytelling. Carefully chosen objects and processes merge with ancient and contemporary techniques. Her ephemeral relationship to land, body, and belonging are cast in the poetics of her alchemical craft. Egg tempera, encaustic paintings, and intuitive drawings capture her explorations. Her painterly sound and video collages search for the fleeting moments through the veil of her world. Lost objects, handmade paper, chalk sculptures, wild fire dust, surface rubbings, and copper sun pigment fill her field sketchbooks and drawings. She develops drawing exercises, writing prompts, and colour studies to immerse herself in the investigation of place, time and meaning-making. Collaborative drawing prompts are crafted with curiosity and care for the people and place she is with at any moment. Her intention is to navigate the dimensions of intuitive creation, and materialize the beauty outside and in.

Courtney is working to create a more conscious material practice as an artist and educator. By working in community spaces, she is developing creative projects that prioritize wellbeing, dialogue, and place-based education. She believes land-based pedagogies create more authentic, and resilient ways of being here and now. She continues to evolve her material exploration in her teaching and learning philosophy, reflecting on the complexity of human relationships in the more-than-human world.