Toronto-born, Silvia Pecota, is an award-winning artist and photographer whose work covers the four corners of the world. She has exhibited in Canada, Germany, Italy, Abu Dhabi and Afghanistan and was the first Canadian to hold an exhibition in the former Soviet Union. Her work has been focused on Canadian culture which includes the Inuit and the Arctic, Canada’s sport of Hockey as well as the Canadian Forces (honouring those who have served and the memory of the Fallen).
Since 1985, her photographs have appeared internationally in several top publications, as well as the Toronto Sun and the National Post and its affiliated papers. Her photographs have appeared in Time Magazine, Sports Illustrated, Der Spiegel (Germany), MAX (Italy, France, Greece) and she has been represented by DPA (Duetsch Press Agency-Germany). Her portrait work of personalities includes: Marcello Mastroianni, Anthony Quinn, Don Cherry, Shania Twain as well as many sports figures such as Wayne Gretzky, Kurt Browning, Elvis Stojko, Joe Carter, Doug Flutie, Katerina Witt and many Olympic medalists, NHL, CFL, Major League Baseball Players and Boxers.
In 1992, her love of boxing produced a photo exhibit featuring many amateur and professional Canadian boxers as well as legendary names including George Chuvalo, Lennox Lewis, Jake Lamotta, Hurricane Carter, Mike Tyson, and Sugar Ray Leonard. These portraits reflected the pugilist’s soul; their dedication and struggles as well as their despair and triumphs in and out of the ring. She later turned her fascination of the boxer into a short documentary titled “Lacing On the Gloves”, which won her critical acclaim and awards including a nomination for best cinematography in 1997 (Canadian Society of Cinematographers.)
Her images of Boxing were on display at Photokina in Cologne Germany 2002 and in December of 2003, her show “O' Canada” was on exhibition at the AGFA Gallery in Milan, Italy.
From her travels to the Canada’s northern territories, Silvia saw the needs of remote hamlets and as a result, organized numerous hockey drives for Nunavut children. She spearheaded four hockey drives over the years to Pond Inlet, Repulse Bay, Kugluktuk (in Nunavut) and Wawa (Ontario). She later returned to Pond Inlet with photography and darkroom supplies where she volunteered her time to teach photography at Takiualuk school. This experience inspired her to illustrate her first children’s book, “Hockey Across Canada”, which became so popular with elementary schools that in 2005, it was also translated into Inuktitut.
Furthermore, her photographs of the Inuit produced a body of work that resulted in several international exhibitions, initially launching in Toronto in March 2000, entitled “Spirit of the North; Celebrating the first Anniversary of Nunavut”. In the summer of 2001, her Arctic photographs were part of an UNESCO sponsored exhibit, "Element Wasser" (The Element of Water), in Volklingen, Germany. Her show “Nunavut, Personaggi, Paesaggi e Miti dell'Artico Canadese” was also exhibited in Italy, in Desenzano del Garda and Fonzaso (Belluno). In 2006, her images of the Inuit were exhibited at Museo Regionale di Scienze Naturali (as well as 3 other venues in Torino, Italy) during the 2006 Winter Olympics.
For the 2007 Canada Winter Games (in Whitehorse, Yukon), Silvia created an artwork series, illustrating traditional Inuit and Dene games entitled, “Northern Spirit Through Northern Sport / Le Sport du Nord dans l’Esprit du Nord”.
Since 2001, she has also focused her work on the “Canadian Soldier”. Being embedded with the troops, she was able to document their efforts, appreciate their dedicated service and witness the sacrifices soldiers endured when putting themselves in harm’s way. Silvia Pecota was selected by the Canadian Army in 2003, to participate in the Canadian Forces Artist Program and since then has had the opportunity to take photographs on various bases across Canada as well as travel to Haiti and five times to Afghanistan. Her experiences from the Afghan Mission and the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), have inspired over 50 compositions, six large format art calendars (from 2009-2013 and in 2018), as well as producing various end-of-tour gift (commemorative artwork and medallions) for the soldiers finishing their overseas deployments.
In 2008, she sculpted a relief, dedicated to the Fallen, of which there are two bronze copies. One is displayed at the Royal Canadian Air Force Museum in Trenton, Ontario while the other had been on display at the Canadian Cenotaph in Kandahar, Afghanistan and will be mounted at a memorial in Ottawa.
In 2012, Silvia was commissioned by the Class of the United States Army War College to create artwork representing “Fallen Comrades”. She was the first female and non-American artist to have been selected in its 110 year history.
Since 2013, she has been commissioned by the Royal Canadian Mint to design several commemorative coins of which two coins were nominated for the International “COTY” (Coin of the Year) by Krause Publications in the “Inspirational Category” for 2016.
As well, Alberta Motor Vehicles selected Silvia’s artwork, “Fallen Comrades: PPCLI”, for a license plate that won best License Plate in North America for 2014 (ALPCA) and the sale of the License plates has raised money for the CFMWS (Canadian Forces Morale & Welfare Services).
Silvia’s most recent project was an exhibition and book entitled “Remembering Our Fallen” that launched on November 3, 2015 at the Joseph D. Carrier Art Gallery in Toronto. Her book, “Remembering Our Fallen” is a collection of artwork and poetry that commemorates and honours the lives and memory of our Fallen military from Canada’s Colonial Wars to the present day. There are over 50 images featured in this 72 page book as well as 22 poems she has written. The theme depicts the Canadian soldier in battle, as well as particular heroic figures from our history and allegorical representations of values and of sufferings that war inflicts.
She is currently working on artwork related to allegorical themes.