City Homes
Expat Anna Church’s Toronto Home Is A Studio And Gallery For Her Art
Updated on November 17, 2023
Every morning, artist Anna Church goes for a walk. It first became a ritual during lockdowns: she listens to audiobooks or podcasts, researching and thinking, always accompanied by Jack, her wire-haired Jack Russell terrier. Then, after returning to her home in Toronto’s east end, she steals herself away in the second-floor studio to create art.
Anna and her husband, who works in software development, relocated to Toronto with their two kids in 2012 for her husband’s job. Three years and two homes later, they bought this 1895 Victorian in Riverdale. It felt stuck in the 1980s — which was exactly what Anna wanted. “So many of the houses we looked at had been renovated or flipped,” says Anna. “Then we found this beautiful, totally unspoiled house that had lots of weird yellow and red tones. I don’t think a lot of people could see the vision of what it could be, but I could.”
Scroll down to see the New Zealand expats’s beautiful Toronto home and art!
Excited about renovating the house to make it her own, Anna had the rooms taken back to the studs, then brought in character details such as plaster medallions, mouldings and wide-plank wood floors, transforming the Victorian into a home with pared-back, Scandi style. She painted the walls in Behr’s Whisper White and grounded the airy rooms with black accents.
“I wanted a neutral canvas so that it would be easy to layer in furniture and art,” says Anna.“I love that uncluttered Scandinavian aesthetic, where the design shows through in how things are made and built.” Custom Victorian-era plaster medallions were recreated throughout the home to honor its heritage.
The black and white kitchen is sleek and streamlined. “When we have family meals together, I try to get my kids involved in the cooking,” says Anna.
Extending the kitchen’s footprint into the dining room, a panel-ready fridge, coffee station and pantry are hidden behind custom cabinets.
Anna prefers a neutral palette throughout her home but fell in love with this vintage rust-hued rug.
Anna’s art is a mixture of sculpture and photography that she dubs “sculptography.” Using found or foraged items including plants and pottery, she crafts a sculptural form — sometimes held together by wires and skewers — then captures it in a photograph using natural light. Her themes run the gamut, from sustainability to the natural world to living in political grey areas. Capturing the perfect angle that marries material and theme is an intuitive process that comes second nature. “I get into a flow state, and I don’t overthink it too much,” says Anna. “It’s an innate feeling.”
Keep scrolling to see Anna’s beautiful art!
“Crowning Glory” by Anna Church.
Prior to her fine art career, Anna worked in graphic design and props styling at magazines including NZ House & Garden and NZ Life & Leisure. Ceramic props from Crown Lynn, New Zealand’s signature pottery manufacturer, piqued her interest. She saw something special in the unique shapes of the pottery, and that led to her first piece in 2008, Crowning Glory, an overhead image of white and cream crockery in the shape of New Zealand (pictured above). The editions sold out and cemented her path as an artist.
“Suspended Animation 1” by Anna Church.
For her 2022 Supernatural series, Anna bought coral mushrooms from a farmer in St. Catharines, Ont., and flowers from a Toronto market. From there, she built her sculptures and held each in place with skewers before photographing them. After the images are printed and framed, Anna sells them independently and through Art Interiors and Saatchi Art. Some of the works from this series currently hang in her home. “My house is my canvas so, for any art I create, I first visualize how I would live with it,” says Anna.“If I wouldn’t live with it, it ends up on the cutting room floor.”
When Anna isn’t making a new piece, she spends afternoons in her studio packaging up prints to ship all over the world.
She loves that when the perfect idea strikes or when the sunlight hits just right at home, she can head upstairs to brainstorm her next collection. The crown jewel of the serene Victorian is Anna’s studio, with its 10-foot-high ceilings and big bay windows that flood the space with natural light. The first two floors of the house also serve as her gallery space, staging area for her art consulting work and a venue for her side business, Hyphae, which hosts events to showcase sustainable Ontario businesses.
Anna Church
House & Home