SANCTUARY

Caroline Larsen

and Stanzie Tooth

September 5 - October 10, 2026

Opening: Saturday September 19, 6 - 8 pm

General Hardware presents Sanctuary, a two-person exhibition featuring new works by two powerhouse artists, Caroline Larsen and Stanzie Tooth. Bringing together two distinct contemporary painting practices deeply engaged in landscape. Larsen and Tooth challenge the traditional confines of landscape painting. Sanctuary presents a space of resilient havens forged out of deserts, islands, mountain peaks, and wild local forests and meadows.

Caroline Larsen’s painting, Swiss Refugio, embodies a safe haven, a high-altitude mountain outpost. Utilizing her signature, maximalist technique of thick, hyper-saturated oil paint, Larsen transforms the Swiss shelter into an ecstatic, tactile monument. Her work further expands into the visionary landscape of California’s desert oasis, Salvation Mountain. In Larsen's hands, these environments shift from mere geographic locations into brilliant, psychological havens carved out of the landscape.

In Larsen’s Azore’s paintings, the landscape is not presented as a fixed geographical view, but as an immersive and dreamlike environment. Saturated colour and densely worked paint transform the island terrain into a place that feels remote, lush and intensely alive. The paintings evoke the Azore’s as a place apart: an island refuge.

Caroline Larsen eared an MFA with distinction from Pratt Institute in New York, and a BFA at the University of Waterloo. In 2015 she was recognized as a finalist in the esteemed RBC Painting Competition. Larsen has exhibited her paintings worldwide, including Wave Hill Public Gardens, The Hole, Boiler Room: Pierogi Gallery, Craig Krull Gallery, Foulandi Projects, General Hardware Contemporary (Toronto), Mindy Soloman (Miami), Gordon Gallery 2 (Tel Aviv), 68 Projects (Berlin) and Dio Horia (Greece). Her works can be found in noteworthy private and corporate collections internationally. She has garnered attention from influential publications such as the New York Times, Whitewall Magazine, Canadian Art, and Juxtapoz Magazine, among others. Notably, her artworks were featured in The Beyond: Georgia O'Keeffe and Contemporary Artists exhibition at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas. The exhibition subsequently traveled to the North Carolina Museum of Art and the New Britain Museum of American Art in Connecticut. Caroline Larsen lives in Brooklyn, New York.

In a compelling regional dialogue, Stanzie Tooth grounds the exhibition in the fertile, terrain of rural southern Ontario. Tooth’s paintings unearth atmospheric, fluid compositions. Her lush ecosystems are alive with local pollinators, delicate butterflies, and slithering snake, motifs that introduce an ecological tension. In her work, the rural Ontario forest is not a passive backdrop, but an active, protective web of interdependence where one seeks a return to the native landscape.

Stanzie Tooth earned her BFA from OCAD University and obtained an MFA with distinction from the University of Ottawa. In 2015, she was honoured with the Joseph Plaskett Award for Painting, facilitating her residencies in Berlin, Iceland, Greece, and Italy. Tooth's contributions have been recognized by Canadian Art Magazine, The Toronto Star, and Now Magazine. Her paintings are included in private and corporate collections, such as The Royal Bank, Toronto Dominion Bank, A.T. Tolley Collection, Equitable Bank, Google Collection the City of Ottawa, and St. Michael’s Hospital. Tooth is based in Toronto, Canada.