They’ll spend thousands and cross borders, all to appear at the Toronto Outdoor Art Fair

Every summer, Maria Doering pushes the limits of what her family car can hold. Doering is a printmaker from Dartmouth, N.S., and this weekend, she’ll join more than 400 independent artists who are exhibiting their work at the Toronto Outdoor Art Fair. The annual event opens Friday at Nathan Phillips Square, and Doering’s bags are already packed for the 1,700 km journey, wedged among tarps, folding chairs, a portable fan — and 130 original works of art. 

This will be her fifth time making the trip. “The weekend on the square is hard,” she tells CBC Arts. “It’s hot. It’s a marathon and a sprint at the same time.” She will invest thousands of dollars to make it to Toronto without any real guarantee of breaking even. “People always ask me, ‘Why would you go this far?’ And I’m like, ‘Well, where else am I going to have 170,000 people see my work in three days?'”

TOAF organizers cite the same number: 170,000. It’s the volume of visitors expected to pass through the fair over its three-day run. Every year, the event is held out in the open — occupying the grounds in front of city hall – and it’s totally free to attend. As a result, it attracts a mix of dedicated art lovers and casual onlookers, including, one presumes, a sizable delegation of bemused tourists. (How many people have lost an afternoon exploring the booths because a selfie with the Toronto sign was on their travel itinerary? I’d love to see the data.)

The fair is now in its 64th year, and in all that time, it’s never been so, well, Canadian. More and more artists like Doering have been crossing provincial borders to be a part of the action, and organizers say the numbers for 2025 are unprecedented.

There will be 45 out-of-province exhibitors on the square this weekend. (If you lump in TOAF’s online component, a total of 70 national artists will be participating in the fair.) A select few will be showcased as part of curated regional sections; those zones are devoted to artists from Atlantic Canada and Quebec (a Northwest Territories exhibition will be viewable through the TOAF website). But the national visitors hail from all over: Yellowknife and Calgary, Vancouver and Fredericton, rural Manitoba and the Eastern Townships of Quebec. 

Where else am I going to have 170,000 people see my work in three days?– Maria Doering, artist

Anahita azrahimi has been the executive and creative director of TOAF for 10 editions now. When she joined the organization, the fair was much more local in flavour, with “maybe four or five” out-of-towners in the mix.

That changed in 2020, when TOAF made the classic pandemic pivot to digital. By going virtual, more artists from beyond the GTA were able to apply, and every year since, 60-70 national artists have been selected for TOAF’s virtual fair, which continues to run in tandem with the IRL proceedings. Now, says azrahimi, a lot of those Canadian artists “want to try it out in person. So they’re coming.”

We always want to attract more artists, but of course travelling to Toronto to showcase is not that easy.– anahita azrahimi, TOAF executive and creative director

An influx of national talent has the potential to transform the atmosphere at the fair, which azrahimi sees as a boon for local art enthusiasts. “It’s kind of like a one-stop shop to get a sense of what’s happening in the country,” she says. “It’s exciting for the public to come and see something from across Canada.”

TOAF has made outreach efforts to attract more talent from around the country, she adds, and the fair works with provincial arts councils to promote “the opportunities we have at TOAF.” Also, the organization began offering travel bursaries in 2023 as an extension of its equity program, Art Encounters. “We always want to attract more artists, but of course travelling to Toronto to showcase is not that easy,” says azrahimi.

For this year’s edition, 21 artists from outside Ontario will receive bursaries of up to $1,500, funds that are meant to offset the cost of travel. In Doering’s experience, the trip is a difficult thing to budget for. “It can be $3,000 to $4,000 or more in expenses to attend the fair,” she says, reflecting on how much she’s invested in the past. And — whether they’re going by plane, train or carshare — the bills an artist might run up by just getting there are only the beginning.

There are accommodations to book, artworks to ship. (Only the lucky few can jam their oeuvre in a standard set of luggage.) On site, artists require a tent and tables, which they may choose to buy or rent. And the fee to simply run a booth is between $700 and $1,000, says azrahimi. (Exhibitors are selected by a jury, and more than 1,000 artists applied to participate in 2025.)

In 2019, Doering’s first year at TOAF, she applied for a grant from Arts Nova Scotia “to mitigate the risk.” This time around, she’s paying her way entirely out of pocket. She applied for a travel grant from the Canada Council several months ago. “I might find out after the fair that [my] expenses were covered, which would be great,” she says. “It’s the kind of thing you just cannot guarantee. Like, you have to do your calculation without funding.”

Other artists aren’t comfortable making that sort of wager. Melcolm Beaulieu and Nasim Makaremi Nia received travel bursaries from TOAF, and without that support, they would not be flying to Toronto this weekend. Both artists were invited to appear in TOAF’s Atlantic Canada showcase, and as a result, their booth fees were waived as well. “I pretty much never do markets,” says Beaulieu, calling from Fredericton. The buy-in is often too steep, they say. “I primarily sell through my website, and then for larger pieces, I contact curators directly … people I have relationships with, museums.” 

Beaulieu is a bead artist who was featured in Radical Stitch, an acclaimed travelling exhibition of contemporary Indigenous artists organized by the MacKenzie Art Gallery. This summer, they’re showing work at the Campbell River Art Gallery in B.C. “If I sell things [at TOAF], great. If not, I’m hoping to connect with other Indigenous artists … and also curators, galleries, that kind of thing.” For Beaulieu, reaching an audience as big as TOAF’s is an exciting prospect. 

Makaremi Nia, who lives in St. John’s, agrees. She’s participated in TOAF’s online fair in the past. “I didn’t sell anything, but I found it very important,” she says. Through her profile on the TOAF website, curators and collectors were able to discover her chimerical works on paper, and she credits several opportunities, including a gallery show, to the exposure. 

TOAF’s reputation as the largest contemporary art fair in Canada is also appealing to Neltje Green, a first-time exhibitor who finished a BFA in design at Concordia University earlier this year. As a recent grad, she feels she’s made inroads within the Montreal art community, “but I’d love to get my name out a little bit more in Ontario and Toronto,” she says. 

Green will be bringing several new paintings to TOAF. They’re pictures of colour-saturated interiors. Familiar but hauntingly spare in detail, each scene is meant to evoke a beloved place, and they’re reconstructed from memory — an unreliable thing, to be sure. In scale, they’d never fit in a carry-on bag; the largest measures 91 by 122 centimetres. “And I work mainly on wood panel, so they’re heavy.”

Still, Green plans to personally haul her babies from the subway to the train station — all the way to Toronto. A few paintings have already arrived in the city, thanks to some volunteer art mules. “Anytime I had a friend or a family member who lives pretty much anywhere in Ontario come visit, I would give them a piece or two.”

“It’s a little nerve-racking taking this stuff pretty much anywhere outside of my apartment,” says Green. Even after an artist’s successfully shipped their work to Toronto, there are other risks that could trigger a panic. For out-of-towners, finding secure storage can pose a challenge. Doering drives to the fair, “which means that for at least one night, or two nights, your work is in your car.” Last year, shortly after arriving in Toronto, her vehicle was broken into. The vandals left her artwork alone, but even so, the incident was a costly disruption she couldn’t have predicted. 

And then, of course, there’s the obvious risk: the potential chaos of an outdoor art fair. “The weather is definitely the thing I think most of us, no matter where you’re from, are really worried about,” says Doering. If a severe thunderstorm — or some other act of a cranky god — forces organizers to evacuate the square, there’s not much to be done. “I mean, I can’t take my 100 and whatnot pieces with me,” says Doering. 

None of those risks will deter her from going, though. The artist is too excited to unveil her new work and “see her people” — the collectors and visitors who are drawn to her booth, transfixed by the cellular swirls of her abstract linocuts. But the trip has serious financial implications too. What transpires over three days will have an impact on her livelihood. “I would say TOAF is probably about a third of my yearly income from fine art,” says Doering.

That’s not going to be the reality for every exhibitor. According to azrahimi, collectors are expected to spend $2 million dollars on site during the run of the fair, but for many participants, the pay-off is harder to quantify. Exposure may lead to future commissions or client work. “There are so many stories that come out, we can’t even capture it,” she says. 

“It’ll be different every year,” says Doering of her own experience at TOAF. “Even with ever-increasing expenses, it’s still worth doing.”

“So far, we have always had fantastic experiences,” she says. “Despite all the trickiness of it, it’s a great adventure.”

Toronto Outdoor Art Fair. July 11 to 13. Nathan Phillips Square, Toronto. www.toaf.ca