Cafe Saint Henri (Verdun)

Esmé James is an illustrator based in Montréal who works mostly with traditional media such as ink and watercolour. She likes to portrait colourful scenes in which she usually depicts animals and characters having a nice time and enjoys adding intricate details that add storytelling elements into her pieces. Esmé considers herself to be an optimistic person who enjoys looking for the little things that make the world beautiful and this is a sentiment she tries to apply to her art.

Lisa is a Belgian illustrator and animator. She expresses her creativity through colorful, childlike, and gentle artwork. She has a love for poetry and strives to incorporate as much of it as possible into her illustrations.

Deeply sensitive to the world around her, she draws inspiration from the hidden beauty of everyday life, transforming it into images that transport the viewer.

Having recently fallen in love with Montreal, her new adventures have inspired an entirely new collection, inviting you to discover the city through her eyes.

Neltje Green is a painter and designer based in Montréal whose work explores how memory and lived experience become embedded in architectural space. Her paintings treat environments as a form of portraiture; rooms, thresholds, streets, and interiors that quietly hold the traces of human presence. Figures are absent, yet their lives are felt through space. A door left ajar, a light left on, or a window holding the blur of a passing gesture becomes a way of describing absence through atmosphere, structure, and light. For Neltje, space functions as an anchor for memory. Her work emerges from places she has personally encountered, but they are not rendered as exact records. Instead, shifting recollection shapes the image: some areas remain precise while others dissolve into abstraction, and colour moves away from observation toward emotional recall. These environments feel both specific and familiar, inviting viewers to project their own memories into them. Green has exhibited her work in Montréal, including presentations at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, and recently presented her first solo exhibition in Toronto.

Sylvain Rolando created the artistic project “Oh Mon Doux” to celebrate positive and tender representations of love between GBTQ+ men—images that were missing for him during his childhood. Through this initiative, he became more actively involved in promoting the well-being of the LGBTQ+ community by developing socially engaged projects that depict tender, playful, and joyful intimacy.

All designs are proudly produced in Hochelaga, Montreal. The original works are traditional watercolors on 100% cotton paper, and the illustrations are printed locally in Montreal on FSC-certified eco-friendly paper.

Astro Circo© is an independent creative studio based in Toronto and Montreal, founded by artists Victoria and Edwin. Specializing in brand identity, illustration, graphic design, and multidisciplinary visual art, the studio blends graphic design with street culture to create bold, playful, and innovative visual experiences. Driven by curiosity and experimentation, Astro Circo© believes in breaking traditional design boundaries and using diverse tools and mediums to explore new directions in visual storytelling.

Pier-Olivier Desbiens is a multidisciplinary visual artist. Working professionally as a 3D artist, they are an illustrator and a hobbyist tattoo artist. Their main passion is supporting musicians by helping them out with show flyers and merch design, collaborating with fellow local artists is greatly important to their work. They are vehemently opposed to artificial intelligence in any shape or form.

Corbo was made in France and built in Canada, where he has been currently running around in the small village of Montreal. In 2022, he left the brutal world of concrete and striped ties to launch full-time into the world of flowery landscapes and colored pencils. Fond of puns, he likes to juggle with the dictionary and mix expressions to the rhythm of his brushes in order to put a delicate smile and lightness on your face. 

Audrey creates sensitive spaces from fragments of memory deposited and collected over time. Her journey, nourished by the exploration of the neuroscience of perception, explores the resonance between bodies, places, and atmospheres. Through digital collage and assemblage, she composes small, vibrant sensory architectures with organic forms. Her works invite an immersive and poetic experience, permeated by light, texture, and depth.

Roz Kazaz is an artist & illustrator living and working in Montreal. Self-taught in a variety of media, she developed her skills over a lifetime, exploring diverse creative avenues such as illustration, graphic design, portraiture, murals, airbrush and wearable art.

After years of working as a graphic designer in the fashion industry, her focus shifted to editorial illustration. She is the author & illustrator of Le jardin d’Aubergine, a collection of children’s books published by Éditions Hurtubise in 2010.

Most recently, she’s returned to her roots: ‘analog’ painting and drawing, free of computer intervention, deadlines and direction. This collection of intuitive drawings, called Outsider Art / Inner Journeys, features ink works from her sketchbooks created between 2020 and 2026.

Scott Cowan is an artist, writer, animator, and photographer based in Montreal. He holds a BFA in Film Animation from Concordia University. He is known for his surreal, digital-collage–style artworks, as well as his abstract, minimalist, and experimental short films, which explore themes such as mental health, depression, and addiction.