About

ESA Contemporary Art was a high school art program I helped to build and run for nineteen years before leaving in June 2023. Many post-secondary art schools around the world told us that we were considered the top, or among the top three high school art programs in the world. We held this place for a decade, with at least one US art school using our students as the standard against which all other applicants in the world were considered. There were many years during which our students were offered a significant percentage of all of the top scholarship offers from all of the top post-secondary art programs in the world.

We provided the structure and clarity, time and space, materials and environment, and most significantly - the community - that allowed people to determine fundamental aspects or first principals of themselves.  We built futures upon this awareness that included many things, including art.  

We took responsibility for critical elements essential to honest communication within an understanding of the work of human achievement.  Members of our international community commit to an engagement that is empathetic, vulnerable, and as unconditional as possible.   

We practiced restructuring international systems.  For example, in 2014 ESA won 50.5% of all Scholastic Art and Writing International Regional Art Awards,  83% of all Film Awards, and 21% of all Writing Awards, in the world outside of the USA. In the final National Round that year, the USA won the most awards, ESA won the second most awards in the world, Korea won the third most, and the UK the fourth.

Many years we received the most full scholarship offers and the highest number of top scholarships of any high school program in the world.  Every year our students were offered the opportunity to go to school for free, including tuition and room and board and insurance and course fees and materials and insurance and even some times cars, in programs in the US and Europe.

Approximately half our students entered portfolio-based post-secondary programs, the majority of the other half moving into math and science.  What we did at ESACA closely mirrored contemporary thinking in some of the more creative academic fields today.  

Our students have been enormously successful. For many years our grade 12 students were considered for representation by some of Canada’s leading contemporary art galleries, and many continue to exhibit today in galleries around the world.

ESACA offered students an annual selection of local, national, and international exhibition opportunities, that included the Saatchi Gallery in London UK where we exhibited four years in a row, and our annual participation in the Albright Knox Gallery in Buffalo NY.   In some school years we would participate in more than one hundred exhibitions.

Portfolio Day generated more than $135 million dollars in initial scholarship offers for our students. In 2019, PD10 saw more than 95 post-secondary schools and programs from 5 countries send 145 representatives to see our 80 exhibiting grade 12’s. Each student exhibited their work in a curated solo exhibitions throughout the school, and we were joined in the evening by many thousands of members of the art world and public for a celebration of their achievement.

Our program was built by and supported by our students and graduates and parents. It has been an amazing place to be. I am forever grateful for each and every one of you.

 Matthew Varey

A couple of notable personal awards and nominations:

∙       2016 Recipient of the Canadian Society of Education Through the Arts Secondary Art Teacher of the Year Award

∙       2014 Recipient of the TDSB Excellence in Teaching Award

∙       2012 Recipient of the Ontario Society of Education Through the Arts Teacher of the Year Award

∙       2016      Nominated for an OTIP Teacher of the Year Award                                                                                  

∙       2014      Nominated for the Prime Ministers Award for Teaching Excellence

∙       2014      Nominated for the Ted Prize                                                                                     

∙       2013      Nominated for a TDSB Excellence in Teaching Award

∙       2013      Nominated for the Premier’s Award for Teaching Excellence          

∙       2013      Nominated for OTIP Teacher of the Year Award

∙       2012      Nominated for the Ontario College of Teachers Inspiring Public Confidence Award

∙       2010-15 Nominated for the Toronto Star Teacher of the Year Award

∙       2011      Nominated for the Premier’s Award for Teaching Excellence

∙       2011      Nominated for the OSEA Teacher of the Year Award 2011

∙       2011-2025 Awarded Scholastic Art and Writing Awards Gold Medals