Rhoda Payne was raised in Montreal and educated at McGill University and Brown University where she earned her MA in Teaching in Fine Arts. This was followed with further studies at St. Martins College of Art in London and seven years of teaching art and photography in Madrid, Spain and Santiago, Chile prior to moving to Toronto.
Since Rhoda began
painting professionally in 2011 she has shown successfully in solo, juried and group exhibitions, in public and private galleries and in corporate collections including the
Peter MacKendrick Gallery at Wychwood Barns, Toronto, the McMichael Gallery, Kleinburg, ON, the Agnes Jamieson Gallery, Minden, ON, Artworks Oakville, Oakville, ON, in Portraits of Resilience at the Art Gallery of Ontario and in Ambient Landscapes, a juried exhibition at the Art Gallery of Northumberland. She participates annually in the Etobicoke Art Group Annual Juried Exhibitions where, in 2014, Rhoda’s ‘Maine Escape’, was awarded first prize. Rhoda has exhibited in The Artist Project, Toronto, in Salon des Rechargés, a private salon in Toronto, in Salon 15 with Propeller Gallery, Her large diptych 'Irises' hangs in the Cafe at the Baycrest Terrace Residence, she recently exhibited at the Gina Godfrey Gallery and her florals and landscapes were on exhibited from Oct 2025- April 2026 in the Culture Hub of the Baycrest Hospital Foundation.
Rhoda’s widely collected work demonstrates confidence in her personal language of colour, line, form and
surface. Her paintings radiate
excitement, vitality and optimism. Whether non-objective or loosely subjective her
canvases are filled with her signature expressionist mark-making, sumptuous colour
and often unexpected compositional forms where dynamic gestural passages
dialogue with lavish drips to signal her love of surface, paint and the
painting process.
Rhoda has been elected to the Ontario Society of Artists, the Federation of Canadian Artists and the Colour and Form Society. She has served on the Board of the Aird Gallery in Toronto as well as the Board of the Etobicoke Art Group and has taught week-long summer workshops for advanced painters at the Haliburton School of Art and Design and at Loyalist College.
Rhoda is represented in Toronto by Denison Gallery and by Susan Phillips.
July 2026, Toronto
For
more information contact Rhoda at rhodapayne@gmail.com
Follow me on Instagram @rhodapayneartist