Nikola Wojewoda (OCAD) has a wide-ranging materials practice that exhibits contemporary painting, drawing, printmaking, collage, sculpture, and installation. In her narrative approach, she often combines two and three-dimensional work to tell a story. Her detailed and process-oriented work investigates the intersections of icon, symbol and pattern, and the bridge between fine art and craft.

Nikola has taught courses in painting, sculpture and ceramics, has been a juror for Arts Burlington and Public Art projects, and is the artistic development Mentor for the Hamilton and Region Potters Guild in 2024/25.

In 2021 Nikola founded ‘The Poor Sisters’ Collective, a group of women sculptors; Nikola, Kara Bunn, Tamara Kwapich, Julie Donec, Wendy Wilson, Heather Kuzyk, Michelle Lynn, Dawn Hackett-Burns, Laura Wells and Kristine Germann. Finding themselves distressed by the dark shifts in society they gathered to confront what is monstrous in our world. Their inaugural exhibition, ‘The Monster Project’, was held at Auchmar Mansion, Hamilton, November 2024. The group continues to explore interesting projects.

My process is like storytelling. I’m drawn to symbols, to the metaphors where layered meaning lies. Through personally constructed archetypes I explore what it is to be human, and what is at stake in these complex times. Symbols provide a rich source from which to explore the human condition. Psychological, spiritual, social and political dimensions are expressed in poetic form. My process is slow, like a traveler walking in the deep woods picking up one bread crumb after another, concepts and imagery are an accumulation of linked impulses, responses, discoveries and research. Words and thought-fragments become a stream of consciousness. They are the gestalt that I work to unravel. I’m not in a hurry, I know that soon I will be telling myself another story about the inner and outer world, steadfastly building my own folklore.