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

About our Scholastic Art and Writing Awards haul, in 2014 this was written up in a Toronto newspaper:

“The talented students of Etobicoke School of the Arts (ESA) recently won a record number of Scholastic Art and Writing Awards – as a school, collectively winning more honours than most competing countries.

“The headline here is that ESA won more national awards than any country in the world, other than the U.S.,” longtime ESA teacher Matthew Varey said of the awards, which are run by Alliance for Young Artists and Writers in New York City. “It’s an American competition, so the U.S. gets most of the awards. Korea was third and Canada was a strong second.”

Led by ESA, Varey said Canadian students won 191 “Golden Keys” – 141 of them taken home by ESA’s talented artists and writers, who also won 25 national awards.

This year – the fourth ESA has entered its students in the competition – saw ESA submit nearly 3,200 pieces to the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards in categories ranging from poetry, painting, and photography, to architecture, comic art, jewelry, digital art and everything in between.

While Varey said he and his fellow teachers already know that their students at ESA rank among the very best in the world – afterall, graduating ESA students raked in more than $2.1 million in scholarships last year alone – seeing their overwhelming success at this year’s Scholastic Art and Writing Awards has nevertheless proven a rewarding experience.

“We already have a really strong sense of where we are in the world, but the percentages are still extraordinary. In the first round, we won 50.5 per cent of all awards given outside the U.S. – so, on the whole planet, we won more than half awards in our little school. It’s amazing,” he said.

“Our students have got such phenomenal talent and ability and drive and work ethic, so really the question now is what do we do with all that? We certainly don’t need to prove that we can win awards anymore, it’s just a matter of figuring out what we can do with the kids next – how can we contribute?”

Leading up to the June 6 Scholastic Art and Writing Awards ceremony, which will take place at Carnegie Hall in New York City, ESA is slated to embark on a series of 19 events – from weekly openings, to the school’s year-end art show, to the second in its series of Art Talks – all beginning this week.

Every Thursday from today until June 4, ESA will host a series of nine student art openings from 3:30 to 8 p.m. Entrance is free. ESA is located at 675 Royal York Rd.”