Field Work by Kristin Sjaarda

When Kristin Sjaarda first exhibited at The Royal in September 2024, she spent time exploring Edwin County Farms, taking in the fields, flowers, and rhythms of the land. Nearly two years later, those same blooms have found their way into Field Work, creating a meaningful full-circle moment between artist and place. Through her lens, the flowers grown just minutes from the hotel become part of a larger story—one that celebrates the people, ecosystems, and careful stewardship that sustain the natural world.

“Field Work is a tribute to the labour of the Ontario flower farmers who produce the flora that appear in these photographs, as well as to the ecologists who do research in our environment and its current crisis. With the inclusion of birds and eggs in this collection, borrowed from the ROM, as well as the butterflies, moths, bees and other fauna that complete the arrangements in the manner of 17th century Northern Renaissance paintings, I aim to create an ecosystem within the frame of the artwork that reflects the diversity of plant and animal life integral to a healthy and vigorous natural world.” — Kristin Sjaarda

Kristin Sjaarda is a photographic, textile, and ceramics artist based in Toronto, Ontario, where she lives with her husband and three sons.  She attended The Colorado Institute of Art in Denver, Colorado on a full tuition scholarship, graduating in 1994. Known for lush large scale still-life images of local flora and fauna from her garden and urban environment, she frequently collaborates with The Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto to include real specimens of birds in her arrangements. She has also designed silk scarves using her own imagery, taught workshops on floral arrangement and natural-light still life photography and designed her own ceramics for use in her photos. Sheridan College and the Ontario Science Centre have invited Kristin to lecture on the intersection of art and ecology.  Her work has been collected internationally and a select portfolio has been published in CandyFloss Magazine (2021), Women United Art Magazine (2023) and Create Magazine (2023). In September, 2022 she was an Artist in Residence at Kingsbrae Gardens in New Brunswick, Canada, and in October, 2022 Smokestack Gallery in Hamilton, Ontario hosted her first Solo Show.