Leighton Bannock / In Cahoots

Leighton Bannock is a Toronto-based figurative painter working primarily in oil. Using both personal and found images as starting points, she collages and repositions figures into contemporary settings to explore the relationships we form with ourselves, with others, and with the objects that shape daily life. Her work spans both figurative and still life painting, often incorporating subtle surreal elements and close, cropped framings that prioritize atmosphere over explicit storytelling.

Leighton is interested in how a single gesture or arrangement of objects can evoke a psychological state or hint at a moment just outside the frame. Once the composition is set, color becomes an anchor that determines the tone of each painting and guides how scenes are understood.

Partial views and proximate objects introduce a sense of liminality, placing viewers between cause and consequence and inviting slow, interpretive looking. Through this intentional ambiguity, Leighton encourages an attentive, unhurried engagement — an invitation to dwell in uncertainty and pause within a world that rarely allows it.