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Current teacher at Place des Arts (2025/2026 season)
Biography
Crystal Koskinen is a Canadian mixed media artist whose work navigates the space between fragility and strength, often revealing moments of light within complexity. Blending traditional and digital processes, she creates expressive, layered compositions rooted in emotion, intuition, and storytelling. Her work is driven by a desire to translate lived experience into visual form, capturing both tension and harmony within a single frame.
The pieces presented in this exhibition are part of an evolving body of work developed alongside a forthcoming poetry collection by a longtime creative collaborator. Each artwork serves as a visual interpretation of the written word—responding to tone, rhythm, and emotional undercurrents within the poems, while also standing independently as abstract expressions.
In parallel, Koskinen is also co-developing a screenplay adaptation of a novel by the same writer, further expanding this interdisciplinary dialogue between text and image. This ongoing collaboration reflects a deep commitment to storytelling across mediums, where narrative moves fluidly between page, canvas, and screen.
Through her brand, Rakkaus Art & Design, she extends her visual language into curated collections across functional and wearable forms. As the founder of Balanced Forces, a curated global exhibition platform and immersive augmented reality series, Koskinen brings together artists worldwide through open calls and thematic exhibitions, exploring how digital and physical worlds intersect while supporting artists in sharing and sustaining their work.
Artist Statement
My work explores the space between fragility and strength, often uncovering moments of light within complexity. As a mixed media artist working across both traditional and digital forms, I am drawn to abstraction as a way of expressing what cannot always be articulated through words. Layer, texture, and movement become a visual language through which emotion, memory, and lived experience take shape.
The pieces in this exhibition are part of a larger body of work created in response to a poetry collection by writer and musician Karen D’Aoust, whom I met while living in Toronto. Now based in Ireland, her writing is deeply rooted in the landscapes and emotional terrain of Northern Ireland, where both the poetry and accompanying novel are set. Our collaboration moves intuitively between text and image, with each piece acting as a visual interpretation of tone, rhythm, and atmosphere rather than literal narrative.
I am also co-developing a screenplay adaptation of her novel, continuing our shared exploration of storytelling across mediums. This process has allowed me to develop imagery to words in a new way.
As an artist and educator at Place des Arts, I am deeply committed to creating fun spaces where creativity feels accessible and exploratory. My practice continues to evolve through connection—between people, mediums, and ideas—seeking to invite viewers into a moment of reflection, resonance, and possibility.
Instagram: @ckfromtbay