Elyse Portal a settler of Ukrainian, Baltic, Mennonite and Irish heritage. Her work revolves around climate crisis endurance exercises that respond to climate uncertainty, land-use changes, and biodiversity loss with sensual research, ecological materials, reciprocal pigment foraging, other-than-human invitations, climate narratives, and socially-engaged ecoart practices.

Living within the territory of the Atikameksheng Anishnawbek in N'Swakamok (Sudbury, Ontario), Portal recognizes that colonialism and mining interests led to the creation of the Robinson Huron Treaty of 1850. Mining impacts directly effect the context in which Portal works, including the tensions among fallout of historical nickel smelter pollution, heavy metal levels, mass tailings ponds, as well as an immense community-engaged regreening project currently remediating the land through the re-alkalizing and planting of 10 million trees.

With Tilke Elkins (of the Wild Pigment Project), Heidi Gustafson (author of Book of Earth), and John Sabraw (maker of reclaimed earths from Acid Mining Drainage), Portal has been expanding her creative land-based practice, considering safety issues in gathering, processing and making paint from contaminated places, to contemplate remedial actions.

Elyse has been part of the collaborative, ee portal, since 2011. Their work mnemonic for the commons, was initiated at the Burren College of Art, Ireland, where they responded to the climate emergency by contemplating nonlinear time recorded within architecture and land expressions. The act of touching Sheela-na-gigs, a goddess figure found over portals, influenced the sensual direction of this work.

Portal studied at the University of Victoria [B.F.A.] and University of Toronto [M.F.A. 2014]. Her master’s project, Materia medica, funded by SSHRC, led to a contemplative inquiry into urban pigment relations with a buried urban waterway. She is currently working on Wind’s Damp Song for the Soil and Other Contemplations on Ecological Justice, an exhibition co-curated with Manidoo Bineshiinh supporting 3 Northern Ontario BIPOC and Francophone artists, at Manidoo Bineshii Dreams (MBD) community arts space on Atikameksheng Anishnawbek. In 2024, as a board member for Myths and Mirrors, Portal identified and generated a partnership with Cambrian College to secure the College and Community Social Innovation Fund (CCSIF) supported by both the Canada Council for the Arts and NSERC. The 3-year project, Creative Mirror Stones: Finding Self and Community Through Socially Engaged Art, will fund BIPoC, social, and ecological artists to lead workshops with Sudbury’s most vulnerable communities. Social work faculty from Cambrian College will track art contributions in relation to participant and community resilience.

Portal’s work is funded by the Canada Council for the Arts and Ontario Arts Council. She is a member of Pigments Revealed International, the ECOART NETWORK, and SCALE/leSAUT - Sectoral Climate Arts Leadership for the Emergency, a network of networks, emerging in Canada.