Nancy Haskell
(b. Toronto, Ontario | Lives and works in the Niagara Region, Canada)

Nancy Haskell is a Canadian painter known for her expressive soft pastel and oil works that merge memory, movement, and imagination. Her compositions—often featuring still lifes or emotionally resonant portraits of women—are distinguished by vivid colour, flowing textures, and a narrative quality that draws the viewer in.

Since beginning her painting practice in 1991, Haskell has exhibited widely across North America, with shows in Florida, Colorado, Arizona, Toronto, and throughout Southern Ontario. Notable exhibitions include a solo show at The Pumphouse in Niagara-on-the-Lake and Rodman Hall Art Gallery in St. Catharines. Her paintings are held in private collections and are appreciated by collectors who seek emotionally rich and stylistically intuitive work.

Working primarily in soft pastel and oil, Haskell creates from intuition rather than observation. Faces, gestures, and room scenes emerge from her imagination, shaped by a background in photography that informs her strong sense of composition, lighting, and atmosphere. Her subjects—whether a curtain mid-flight or a gaze filled with attitude—are projections of inner states, making each piece a psychological portrait as much as a visual one.

A long-time member of the St. Catharines Art Association, Nancy is also deeply involved in supporting regional arts, including organizing art excursions for local audiences. Her work continues to evolve, capturing fleeting emotion and subtle narrative with bold, painterly confidence.