Andrew Bonnycastle is a Toronto based national award winning visual artist working in watercolour, acrylic and oil based paints. Numerous aspects of urban and rural life are explored in Andrew's works. All explorations are linked by a common preoccupation with portraying beauty amidst disorder and life that defies adversity and isolation. Andrew's paintings are allegories, often representing different aspects of the human condition expressed through portraits of individual buildings and street scenes, both rural and urban. These are imbued with a sense of the transient, vulnerable nature of our slowly disappearing first generation buildings. These sublime structures that are the remnants of lives lived and journeys made are coming ever closer to the one fell swoop of the wrecking ball. Regardless of their content, all paintings by Andrew are rooted thematically in the desire to recreate experiences of locality, place and identity. Through this recreation, Andrew strives to penetrate the forces of commercial and social conditioning by offering works of empathy and humanity that tell a candid story about this land and its people. Andrew is a member of The Village Palettes Art Group, The Markham Group of Artists, The Art Guild of Scarborough and The Markham Guild of Village Crafts. Andrew's prolific background of creative endeavours include winning the Robert Bateman Get to Know Art Contest and having a painting accepted into the Royal Ontario Museum's permanent collection. He has also been a featured artist on naturecanada.ca and has had work published in Young Voices Magazine and the Robert Bateman Get to Know Calendar. In 2011 Andrew was one of the youngest artists to ever show at Toronto's Cedar Ridge Gallery.