Writing
helps me understand why I create, and what topics are important to me. It serves as a guide between creation cycles.
Over the years, writing has enabled me to put down my thoughts, connect the dots, and understand myself better. This practice is at the root of my beginnings in visual art. When I started making public art in 2020, my screenwriter friend Clément Bompart encouraged me to take my texts out of my notebooks and upload them to a publicly accessible website, Medium. Among other things, this practice has helped me to properly document my exhibitions and pushed me to learn more about the subjects I tackle through my art. Writing is essential to my creation in visual art, and I will continue to document my artistic journey and reflections in this way.
Winter 2025
Dear McCoymmunity,
Far from the polar temperatures of Québec, I’m writing to you from the Monts d’Arrée, in Brittany, where my grandfather still lives and where my roots remain deeply anchored. This land, abandoned by many because of its harsh climate and marshy grounds, offers me a deep sense of calm every time I return. The acidic soil, holding ancient stones shaped by powerful Atlantic winds, prevents trees from taking hold, giving the landscape an almost desert-like quality. I have drawn much inspiration from here. The melancholic scenery spread across its low hills often brings Ireland to mind, with its rugged and solitary lands. Come and see for yourself one day, you’ll understand.
There’s a saying here: “If you love Brittany in winter, you truly love Brittany.” I believe the same can be said of my adopted country, Canada, a land of near-permanent winter. Far from the long, warm days of June, this solstice marks the end of a cycle and invites deep introspection, allowing the next one to mature. Like you, my year 2025 has been shaped by highs and lows, each bringing its own lessons and sources of inspiration.
This year has been a profound lesson in letting go. Where my entrepreneurial side finds comfort in control and clear milestones, 2025 pushed me to loosen my grip on outcomes and return my focus to effort, presence, and the moment itself. I welcome this teaching and try to make peace with it, without denying my true nature. In my artistic practice, it has led to greater spontaneity, both in creation and in the way I connect with my audience.
With this new mindset, and through creative wandering, I’ve discovered a new way of building my murals by sketching freely on scraps of paper over the past few weeks. I can’t wait to introduce you to my 2026 vintage.
Recently, I had the chance to travel between Marseille and Bilbao, letting myself be carried by the energy of the places I passed through—from La Canebière to the Pyrenees, from the Guggenheim Museum to the rural landscapes of the Basque Country.
Naturally, I often reached for my sketchbook to return to my first love: cross-hatching, drawings made of parallel lines (you can see a few examples in my latest Instagram post). The very first sketch I made was of the Basilica of Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde in Marseille. On the train, a fellow passenger complimented my work and seemed genuinely moved by what I had drawn. To thank her for her kind words and curiosity, I gave her the drawing.
That simple gesture brought me back to the reason I first began creating, especially in public spaces: sharing. In a world where spontaneous interactions with strangers feel increasingly rare, drawing, this universal language that reconnects us with childhood, has the power to lower our defences and spark real conversations. Although I’ve stepped away from political art, I still deeply believe in the transformative power of my practice, and in the idea that beauty is a sensory experience capable of lifting us collectively. Just look at the link between the greatness of past civilisations and the beauty of their art... Hardly a coincidence, in my view.
Carried by this momentum, I gave away three modest drawings during this trip. The third was made at Café Iruña in Bilbao (apparently once frequented by Hemingway). As I was sketching one of the lamps, I struck up a conversation with a local couple in their eighties. The gentleman, warm and curious, asked me where I’d found my postcard. I told him I had just drawn it in my sketchbook, and his eyes lit up: he was an artist himself! We spent a good half hour talking about art in the Basque Country, about his own paintings (which he sadly refuses to show publicly), and about life in general. What a joy. Once again, my deepest conversation of the trip was sparked by art!
Travel, and movement itself, has helped me reconnect with this more spontaneous side of who I am. The letting go I mentioned earlier becomes second nature when I’m on the move. I believe I need to travel more… and sketch in public more often too.
Speaking of movement, as I mentioned in my last autumn note, one of the goals of my stay in Bilbao was to find a gallery to work with. I’ve had a very promising connection with one of them, and I’ll be working hard over the next six months to build a new collection to share. Bilbao is just one ecosystem among many—if you know of other galleries around the world where my work might belong, please let me know.
If this note has stirred in you a desire to engage with art in some way, I’ll be launching a “Work with Titi” section on my website in January, offering several ways to collaborate. I’ll briefly outline them here and invite you to visit www.titimccoy.com in mid-January to learn more. I’ll also announce the launch on Instagram once everything is live.
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Drawing courses: learn at your own pace, whether you’re a beginner or more experienced;
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Commissioned works: receive a custom artwork in Canada or abroad;
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Mural art: collaborate with me to create an artwork on an indoor or outdoor wall;
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Sales programme: if you have art knowledge and strong people skills, sell my murals and earn 10% (under a co-signing agreement).
Having travelled along both the Mediterranean and the Atlantic during this European journey, I’ll leave you with a quote by Leonard Cohen that I hope will resonate with you:“If you don’t become the ocean, you’ll be seasick every day.”
Fall
2025
Dear McCoymmunity,
Ten years ago, in October 2015, I set down my bags in Montréal for the very first time. A living spectacle awaited me: not only the murals that gave the city its vibrant soul, but also the shifting colours of the leaves and the gentle warmth of the Indian summer, which instantly bound me to what would become my adopted home.
Many Indian summers later, only a few weeks ago, nature offered me one of its rarest gifts: a curtain of northern lights dancing across the sky, right above my head.
No matter how many museums I visit or masterpieces I contemplate, one truth remains: nothing rivals the beauty and mystery of the sky in all its forms.
It is this sky that continues to nourish my artist’s soul. Having returned from the stars—where I had dedicated an exhibition in 2024—I now find myself back within the Earth’s atmosphere. What captures my attention these days are cloud formations.
From a purely technical point of view, clouds fascinate me because they are so difficult to reproduce. Their ever-changing nature forces the artist to rely on memory when trying to capture them in the moment. Clouds know no sharp edges; their contrasts are subtle. Push them too far, and the eye is lost in too many focal points, their diffuse nature broken. Too little, and they become nothing more than a hollow ball of cotton, emptied of essence. Their colours too—lit by our nearest star—are endlessly intriguing. Dawn, dusk, the golden hour… these fleeting hues strike us as almost unreal, leaving us spellbound.
My aim this autumn and winter is to study and interpret as many clouds as I can, until I am able to conjure my own, no longer dependent on the sky above. Through this, I hope to build my own worlds—ones that can carry my audience into a landscape of colour and imagination.
To those who say I often have my head in the clouds, they will be right. Soon the clouds will even be inside my head!
On a more philosophical note, clouds seem to be calling me for other reasons too. As I recently shared on Instagram, their impermanence has echoed my own experiences these past months. However magnificent, clouds are only passing through. They vanish, only to return transformed—perhaps even more beautiful, or simply different. Then they disappear again, reminding us of the universal truth of emptiness.
That emptiness leads me back to my own essence. The human body is made of atoms, of which more than 99.9% is empty space, and the matter we are composed of is constantly renewing itself, like a river of fleeting forms. We are shifting architectures of void and passage, a fragile harmony of permanence and change. Letting go of attachment—to our bodies and to the world around us—becomes essential if we wish to live in peace. That, in essence, is the lesson the clouds whisper to me as I paint them: that I am, at once, nothing and everything.
I recently read Des Univers Multiples by Aurélien Barrau, and found a passage I wish to share with you, as it ties in with these reflections: “Nothing is ever direct. When I look at the collection of poems on my desk at this very moment, what I truly see is the outcome of a complex interaction between the light of an electric filament and this composite object, as detected by my eyes. There is no direct access to reality as such. Everything is mediated. It is even likely that reality itself has no sense or existence.”
This notion of mediation reminds me of my earliest exhibitions, when viewers often saw meanings in my works entirely different from those I had intended. Their reality belonged to them. I understood then that my art, like all things, was but a channel, a way for others to access their own inner worlds. As I explained in my first note (Summer 2025), I have since stopped creating to send a message. I try instead to create from the heart rather than the head.
And here we are, in autumn. In many Indigenous traditions, this season marks abundance before winter—the time of introspection. I feel that abundance around me today. Despite farewells and doubts in recent months, I remain grateful for the opportunities life continues to place in my path. My practice has become a true pillar of strength—like the ancestral Japanese art of kintsugi, creation mends the fractures of my vase with gold. Painting is one of the rare moments when I lose all sense of time and space, soaring far above my conscious state, only to return lighter, calmer. The wisdom it gives me in the present moment is something I consciously try to cultivate in every corner of my life, with gratitude.
As the great Sufi poet Rumi wrote: “Wear gratitude like a cloak and it will feed every corner of your life.”
What’s next? Together with my collective, OTM, I hope to create a major mural in Montréal next year as part of the city’s Public Art Mural programme (PAM). The municipality can cover up to 75% of the cost, making such projects far more accessible to property owners. If you know of anyone—a private owner, a shopkeeper, or someone else—who could help us find a beautiful wall, please let me know.
Later this year I’ll also make a nomadic trip to Europe, where I plan to explore Bilbao, a city many have told me holds a strong artistic spirit. A total solar eclipse will take place there next summer, and I hope to connect with gallerists in the area to present some of my works at that time. It’s a long shot, but one I’ll attempt nonetheless! If you know anyone in Bilbao—or any galleries in the eclipse zone —I’d be grateful for the introduction.
Until my next note, I wish you a beautiful autumn.
Summer
2025
Dear McCoymmunity,
It is a pleasure to count you among the very first recipients of this seasonal missive. Your support means a great deal to me, and I want to thank you for taking the time to step into my world.
The McCoyversation will find me, every three months, stealing away from the froth of things to offer you a few reflections, tinted through my artist’s lens, in messages such as this one. Stepping away from social media for this ritual is no accident: writing, to me, is an intimate medium — one that asks to be received slowly, savoured like a letter from a distant friend. Through this form, I hope to open a small door into what truly stirs me, and offer you a few keys to help you unlock the meanings behind my past and future works.
This note is, as its name suggests, a conversation. The perspectives of those who engage with my art have long enriched me and helped me grow. Please feel free to reply, to follow a thread that moved you — I would love to read your reflections, and hear how mine echo within you.
Happy reading!
If you know me, you’ll know how deeply I cherish the Académie des Beaux-Arts de Montréal. Like only Montréal can, this place opened its doors to me eight years ago, back when I was still scribbling quietly in my modest sketchbooks.
Over time, I crossed paths with many talented individuals there — and truth be told, I often simply watched them during life drawing sessions, only to return the following week with the same tools in hand, trying to imitate what I’d seen. I wouldn’t call myself self-taught; rather, I was fortunate to be in the right place at the right time, learning by witnessing craft in motion and trying, humbly, to follow suit.
One such talent is Robert Pietrantonio, a teacher at the Academy who gives, among other things, oil painting classes. I had long wanted to try something beyond acrylic — a plastic medium that, while quick and accessible, never quite let me bring my ideas to full bloom. I’d already explored others, including aerosol paint, but oil kept calling to me. Its richness of pigment, its versatility, its memory of time, and the philosophy that comes with it had always drawn my attention.
As a practising artist, I thought I’d return to the Academy simply to pick up a few techniques — some rules, some tricks — to help me approach this unfamiliar medium. The “fat over lean” rule, the solvents, the glazes, and so on. Yet week after week, Robert wasn’t teaching me how to paint. He was teaching me how to see — to observe, to feel.
When we artists paint “nature” (that is, something real before us), we must memorise what we see so we can later recreate it on the canvas. As counterintuitive as it may sound, this gives us an immense advantage: it allows us to paint a small detail while keeping our sense of the whole.
I find the parallel with life striking. So often, lost in our daily routines, we lose sight of the bigger picture. We labour over details while key foundations remain untouched. During my first exhibition in 2022, I spoke of a psychological shift reported by astronauts: the overview effect. Consistently, those who have seen the Earth from space return home with a renewed alignment — a quiet spiritual awakening rarely encountered in ordinary life. It made me wonder: if we could step outside of ourselves, even briefly, and see the world as a whole, might our time here feel a little lighter?
That, in essence, was the spirit behind a project I co-created last year with screenwriter and filmmaker Clément Bompart.
This pursuit of lightness — of weightlessness — is what anchors my creative work. I began to take art seriously not out of ambition, but as a way to surface, to keep myself from drowning. Something in me knew then that this practice would help me hold on to a sense of wonder.
While the reality is more nuanced, I can say that art has indeed helped me loosen my grip on the world and see myself from unfamiliar angles. I’ve found immense light in it — but also shadow. A kind of low, persistent melancholy that lingers in some of my pieces. Ironically, those works are often the ones that resonate most with others — perhaps because they come from my gut and speak to a shared experience for which only art has the words.
And now, summer begins in the northern hemisphere. For me, that means the mural season is underway. My first mural of 2025 was completed just last week, at the corner of 15th Avenue and Highway 40 in Montréal, near the Saint-Michel Arena. You’ll likely catch a glimpse of it the next time you travel from Québec City to Montréal. For me, this mural marks the culmination of everything I’ve sought in dedicating myself professionally to art. The project itself transformed a former parking lot into green space — a process known as déminéralisation. A community assembly even worked with us, artists, offering thoughts and elements we integrated into our creative process. When the mural was unveiled, several local organisations and elected officials, including the neighbourhood mayor, came to inaugurate the space.
This wasn’t just art for art’s sake — it served a cause, sparked reflection. It gave voice to civic efforts, gave colour to ideas, made the intangible visible. Murals are fleeting witnesses to their time. They carry, in one way or another, the zeitgeist. Climate crisis, in this context, is vast and layered. Raising awareness is a first but essential step toward collective action. That’s the spirit in which my crew, OTM, contributed to this project — and will continue to do so in the years ahead.
Beyond murals — still a cornerstone of my practice — I also want to deepen my work on canvas, with this new medium: oil.
Oil painting will demand from me a monastic patience and a lifelong surrender. At the Academy, we say it often: we are eternal students. My first canvases will be studies, humble observations of the natural world. Over the years, I’ll refine my technique, and my work will gain in quality — just as it did when I began with acrylics. More than commercial success, my aim is to cultivate and sustain the quiet serenity that visual art offers me. I know how lucky I am to have developed this skill, and I hope it will continue to guide me through the beauty — and the brutality — of being alive. And in doing so, I hope you’ll find something of your own in these works, too — something that speaks to your inner landscape.
On that note, I’d love to hear from you: how does art make you feel? Though our responses may differ, I sense among my audience a shared introspective current, something I can’t quite name. Let me be clear: I’ll never create to meet a demand. But knowing how my work speaks to you may help shape what subjects I choose to explore next.
My phase of overtly political “activist art” is behind me now. I still donate 10% of my artistic income to environmental causes — but I no longer wish to guide anyone’s opinion. The crisis we face today — or metacrisis, as Scottish philosopher Jonathan Rowson calls it — is, to my mind, not a political one. It runs deeper. It touches on shared values, the meaning we give to our lives, our ability to connect with ourselves. If art — or beauty, more broadly — is one of the few spaces where most of us can still agree, then I intend to use this space to nurture collective feeling and gently steer the zeitgeist of our era in a direction I believe to be necessary.
I may only have a few decades left to do so — no time to waste…
I hope these words have resonated with you, and that this “newsletter-that-isn’t-really-a-newsletter” format is something you enjoy. Do feel free to share your thoughts — I’ll gladly take them into account when writing my next letter, on the first day of autumn (22 September).