Windsor-based artist and poet Judy Chappus has built a practice defined less by a single style and more by a refusal to settle into one. Across decades of work, her approach has remained exploratory – sometimes abrasive, often deeply personal, and consistently willing to shift direction as new questions emerge.
That restlessness is at the center of Skin in the Game, her current survey exhibition at Art Windsor-Essex. Spanning from her early student work through to the present, the exhibition traces a career shaped by ongoing reckoning with identity, with the realities of motherhood, with the unpredictability of artistic recognition, and more recently, with aging and climate anxiety.
Rather than presenting a clean, linear progression, the work reflects an artist moving through different phases of inquiry. Materials, forms, and methods shift over time. The throughline isn’t visual consistency so much as a persistent engagement with lived experience, translated into physical form.
Chappus’ background includes studies at the University of Windsor and the University of California, Irvine, followed by a return to Windsor where her practice has continued to evolve. That movement between institutions, geographies, and stages of life mirrors the broader sense of transition present in her work.
A visitor browses the Art Windsor Essex showing
of Judy Chappus’s Skin in the Game
There’s also an element of risk embedded in what she does. The title Skin in the Game points to that directly: the idea that the work is not detached or purely conceptual, but tied to personal stakes and imagery. The pieces carry a sense of exposure, whether through subject matter, material choices, or the way they occupy space. They don’t necessarily resolve cleanly, and they’re not trying to.
In interviews and exhibition materials, Chappus’ work is often framed in terms of courage, and it’s an accurate descriptor. Over time, she continues to push into new territory rather than refining a single recognizable output. That can mean periods of uncertainty or uneven reception, but it also keeps the work responsive.
Alongside her visual practice, her writing adds another layer to how she processes and communicates these ideas. The combination of text and image doesn’t always appear directly within the same pieces, but her clear attention to language, to structure, and to the ways meaning can shift carries throughout her work.
Within Windsor’s arts community, Chappus represents a long-view perspective. Her work isn’t tied to a specific moment or trend, but instead reflects an ongoing engagement with creating. That makes Skin in the Game less of a retrospective in the traditional sense and more of a snapshot of an artist still actively working through things.
It’s not about arriving at a conclusion. It’s about continuing to ask the questions.
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Judy Chappus’s Skin in the Game is on display at Art Windsor Essex through May 24, 2026. More information on visiting the exhibit is available at artwindsoressex.ca.
