The Power of Grey — Karen Brown

October 7 to November 8, 2026 | Headwaters Arts Gallery, Alton Mill Arts Centre

Artist’s reception: Saturday, October 17, 2–5 pm

Grey holds more than we might first imagine: wisdom, strength, softness, and the space between certainty and change.

In The Power of Grey, artist Karen Brown brings together encaustic paintings and hand-built ceramics. 

Encaustic is an ancient painting process using molten beeswax, damar resin, and pigment, with each layer fused by heat. Brown combines this luminous medium with photography, watercolour, and other mixed media to create surfaces that reveal and conceal, holding traces of image and memory within the wax.

Florals evoke the beauty of opening, fading, and changing with age. Owls suggest watchfulness and wisdom, while landscapes offer moments of stillness. Hand built ceramic vessels, some incorporating found river stones, extend these ideas into tactile forms.

The Power of Grey invites visitors to consider grey as a place of depth, possibility, and quiet confidence.

Join Karen for a relaxed afternoon reception on Saturday, October 17, from 2 to 5 pm.

The Power of Grey runs from October 7, 2026, to November 8, 2026 

The Headwaters Gallery is located in the Alton Mill Arts Centre at 1402 Queen Street west, Alton, Ontario.

Open Wednesdays to Sundays, 10 am – 5 pm.

Free parking – Free entrance – Accessible – elevator is available to visit other floors in the building where you will find artist studios upstairs and a historic exhibit of this heritage site on the lower level.

Purchasing Artwork

Artwork may be purchased in person by visiting the Headwaters Gallery at the Alton Mill Art Centre or  online here through our website. To purchase any of the artworks  online, simply click on the artwork image and your payment will be processed through our secure Square payment system. The artwork can then be picked up at the gallery or delivery can be arranged with the artist. Please contact the gallery at info@headwatersarts.org to arrange. The buyer will be responsible for any delivery charges.

We acknowledge that the land on which we gather, and on which the Region of Peel operates, is part of the Treaty Lands and Territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit. For thousands of years, Indigenous peoples inhabited and cared for this land. In particular we acknowledge the territory of the Ani-shinabek, Huron-Wendat, Haudenosaunee and Ojibway/Chippewa peoples; the land that is home to the Metis; and most recently, the territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation who are direct descendants of the Mississaugas of the Credit.

We are grateful to have the opportunity to work on this land, and by doing so, give our respect to its first inhabitants.