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Faculty of Art

Drawing and Painting

Meet the Artist

Freda

Tan

Painter

“Responding to current global crises and the violences of displacement, this body of work captures intentional moments of simultaneous presence and honours the expansive relationality that makes us whole. We are always everything at once — not separated, but traversing the cosmic and the terrestrial, the infinite and the immediate. ⋆˙⟡ ”

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Freda Tan is a Toronto-based painter who works primarily with oil paints. Her work visualizes flux sentience – the understanding that all matter, awareness, and being exist in a perpetual state of becoming. Her paintings capture charged moments of elemental transition in ways that are at once organic and abstracted. Working with a soft handling of paint, her brushwork allows forms to breathe into one another, letting light and gestural lines carry energy across the surface. Encountering her paintings, viewers are invited to sense the vibrating energy of matter in motion and to feel the openness of possibility within every moment of becoming. Freda holds an Honours Bachelor of Science degree from University of Toronto and is completing her Honours Bachelor of Fine Arts from OCAD University. She was the recipient of 2023/2024 Sandra Henderson Scholarship in Drawing & Painting from Women's Art Association of Canada. Her work has been shown and held in private collections across Canada.
OCAD U - Faculty of Art
Drawing and Painting
Major Completed, 2026
University of Toronto (St. George Campus, Victoria College)
Cell and Molecular Biology
Major Completed, 2018

Oil Painting

2026, "Alt Space" U of T Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums Annual Exhibition (Art Rental)
University of Toronto, Victoria College, Toronto, ON
2026, Abstract/Act—Thinking in Gesture
OCAD University, Toronto, ON
2025, Awenda Inspired
Ada Slaight Gallery, Toronto, ON
2025, Two-Person Show (Untitled)
Queen Mother Café, Toronto, ON
2025, Uptown Pride
Dignam Gallery, Women's Art Association of Canada, Toronto, ON
2025, Degrees of Expression
Dignam Gallery, Women's Art Association of Canada, Toronto, ON
2025, The One of A Kind Winter Show (Group Fair)
Enercare Centre, Toronto, ON
2025, Get Home Safe (Three-Person Show)
Remote Gallery, Toronto, ON
2024, Face-Off
OCAD University, Toronto, ON
2024, Small Gems
Dignam Gallery, Women's Art Association of Canada, Toronto, ON
2024, Meeting Halfway
Dignam Gallery, Women's Art Association of Canada, Toronto, ON
2024, Undercurrent (Two-Person Show)
She Said Gallery, Toronto, ON
2023, Belonging
183 Gallery, Toronto, ON
2023, Embodied Narratives - Unveiling the stories within
OCAD University, Toronto, ON
2026, 2026 Toronto Outdoor Art Fair Career Launcher
RBC Centre for Emerging Artists & Designers
2025, Partial Gallery OCAD U Showcase
Partial Gallery in partnership with RBC Centre for Emerging Artists & Designers
2024, Sandra Henderson Scholarship in Drawing & Painting
Women’s Art Association of Canada
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