Prairie North Returns!
PRAIRIE NORTH 2026
Back after 21 years, the Art Gallery of Grande Prairie and Northwestern Polytechnic are pleased to announce the return of the Prairie North Artist Residency!
Starting in June, artists Scott Bertram and Les Ramsay will be working in the NWP Fine Arts Studio towards two exciting exhibitions opening this fall at the Gallery. We look forward to welcoming them to the Peace Region for a summer of creative exchange.
The Prairie North Residency was first held in 1993, and has hosted a number of artists over the years, including Sarah Alford, Barbara Amos, Ed Bader, Susan Barton-Tait, Jennifer Berkenbosch, Kay Burns, Robert Christie, Lori Czoba, Lynn Donoghue, Aganetha Dyck, Ian Forbes, Nicole Galellis, Sue Godfrey, Joyce Goodman, Marilyn Gourlay, Less Graff, Greg Hardy, Doug Haynes, Ruth Heijne, Ian Hoffman, David Hoffos, Ken Housego, David Janzen, Carrie Klukas, Ann Manuel, Tina Martel, Walter May, Anne McKenzie, Rita McKeough, David Moore, Lyndal Osborne, Marjorie Taylor, Peter von Tiesenhausen, Donna White and Fay Yakemchuk.
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ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Scott Bertram:
Scott Bertram is an abstract painter whose practice centres around ideas of improvisation, finding meaning within unintended stimuli, and playing with the dynamics of perception. He has a BFA from the University of British Columbia Okanagan and an MFA from NSCAD University. He was a finalist in the 12th RBC Canadian Painting Competition and has received many other awards including funding from the BC Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts.
His work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions across Canada as well as in the USA, Australia, Mexico, and the UK. Scott Bertram currently lives and works in the Comox Valley on Vancouver Island, BC, Canada.
Les Ramsay:
Les Ramsay is a Vancouver-based artist working across painting, textile, sculpture, and assemblage. His work draws from folk aesthetics, craft traditions, landscape imagery, domestic space, and the visual texture of everyday life, combining painted surfaces with found and hand-worked materials. Using upholstery fabric, needlepoint, driftwood, canvas, and sewn textiles alongside oil paint, Ramsay approaches painting as a physical and expanded process shaped through layering, construction, and accumulation.
Balancing humour, awkwardness, decoration, and atmosphere, his works often move between abstraction and representation, where images emerge through material relationships as much as through depiction. Ramsay’s practice is rooted in intuition and making-by-hand, while remaining attentive to how objects, images, and cultural references carry emotional and psychological weight.
Ramsay studied at Emily Carr University of Art + Design and completed an MFA in Painting at Concordia University. He is Métis and lives and works in Vancouver, on the unceded traditional territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. His next solo exhibition with Robert Kardosh Gallery will open in Vancouver in October 2026.
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We graciously acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.
