MFPA Canada

06/01/2026

Welcome to June. ⛵

This month's calendar painting is "Lonely Boat" — an acrylic original, mouth painted by MFPA artist Michael Arbetman. A small wooden boat resting on the sand, the sea behind it green and restless. The light of a summer morning, just before the day decides what it will be.

"Some of us think holding on makes us strong, but sometimes it is letting go." — Hermann Hesse

A quiet thought for a month that brings Father's Day on the 21st — a day many people spend thinking about what they've held onto, and what they've had to release.

June in Canada is the long-awaited stretch of warm evenings, gardens finally settled into their summer rhythm, and the kind of light that doesn't quit until well after dinner.

💬 If you have our calendar on your wall this month, we'd love to know which painting has stayed with you the longest so far.

05/31/2026

Sunday slow-look 🌿

Starting something new — every Sunday, one painting from one of our artists, with one invitation:

Take a minute.

Don't scroll past. Look at the lightest point in the image. Then the darkest. Then find one detail you didn't see at first.

Today's painting is Winter Dawn by Stjepan Perkovic. They spent hours on it. We can spare a moment.

Your Sunday is allowed to be slow. 💛

05/29/2026

This week's Feature Friday: Rob Trent .
On Wednesday, we shared Rob's time-lapse of him painting a street scene — answering his own question ("can I paint people?") with the quiet confidence of someone who has painted with his mouth since he was six years old.
Rob is a UK Full Member of MFPA, based in Southampton. Born in 1959 with arthrogryposis, he was introduced to mouth painting by a home tutor at Chailey Heritage Special School. But painting took a back seat for a while — Rob earned a BSc in Information Systems and went to work for Ordnance Survey, Britain's national mapping agency. The man who spent years studying how Britain's geography is rendered on paper has, in his second act, been rendering it onto canvas.
His 2025 Christmas robin design is currently arriving in homes across the UK. He travelled 300 miles to watch it being turned into a card.
Rob has said of MFPA: "Through the sale of our work, we help each other live independent lives."
That's the whole point of this organization, said cleanly by someone who has lived it.
💬 If you have one of Rob's cards or prints at home, we'd love to know which. Drop a comment for him below.

05/27/2026

A question Rob Trent asked himself recently: "Can I paint people?"
Rob is a UK Full Member of MFPA, based in Southampton. He's painted with his mouth since age 6, and over the years he's built a body of work most people would recognize on sight — robins, woodland scenes, sweeping landscapes. His 2025 Christmas robin design is on cards being sent across the UK right now.
But he asked himself the question anyway. And made a time-lapse.
(Spoiler alert: the answer is yes.) 👏
▶️ Watch: https://youtu.be/E6sAlkFhdpw?si=7yFAhvchAtKEj26f
💬 What would you ask Rob to paint next? Drop your suggestions below — we pass them all along.

05/26/2026

Something worth knowing about for your In the News Tuesday

A new United Nations Human Rights report makes a quietly radical case — disability-inclusive infrastructure isn't a cost to society. It's a foundation.

The report, presented at the 61st session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, focuses on housing and transportation: two areas where inaccessibility quietly shuts disabled people out of community life entirely. The findings are striking.

Building full accessibility into a home at the design stage adds about 1% to construction costs. Retrofitting the same features after a building is finished costs 5% or more. The conclusion: it's cheaper, easier, and more humane to design accessibility in from the start. We just haven't been doing it.

One quote from the panel discussion has stayed with us. Esther Nagetey, an International Disability Alliance youth fellow from Ghana, said: "Infrastructure is not neutral. It reflects whose lives are valued."

It's the kind of line that reframes a whole conversation. We tend to think of buildings, sidewalks, and transit systems as the neutral backdrop to everyone's lives. The report says: they're not. They're decisions. And the decisions reveal who was being considered in the room where they were made.

This work matters here in Canada too — the Accessible Canada Act has set the goal of a barrier-free country by 2040, with concrete reporting cycles every three years. Reports like this one give a global frame to the work happening on the ground every day.

💬 What's an accessibility detail — at work, at home, in your community — that you wish someone had thought about earlier?

(Full report link below👇)🌎🌎
https://www.ohchr.org/en/stories/2026/05/disability-inclusive-infrastructure-foundational-community-life-millions

05/25/2026

This week is National AccessAbility Week in Canada. 🇨🇦

Since the Accessible Canada Act came into force, the last Sunday in May each year has marked the beginning of a week dedicated to celebrating the contributions of people with disabilities — and recognizing the work that still remains in building a country without barriers.

For us at MFPA, this week is personal. Our Canadian members have been creating extraordinary work for decades, often outside the spotlight. Weeks like this one are a chance to share that work with audiences who are ready to see it — and to recognize the many disabled Canadians, in every field, whose contributions shape this country every day.

We'll be sharing artwork and stories from our Canadian members throughout the week. We hope you'll follow along.

Artwork: Eternity by Canadian artisit, Kaileen Nelson Art by Kaileen
💬 What does accessibility mean to you, or to someone you love?

05/22/2026

Meet Francisco Estrada — this week's Feature Friday.
Francisco is a USA student member of the Mouth and Foot Painting Artists, working primarily in acrylics. What's particularly remarkable about his journey is the path he took to get here: he began his artistic career as a sketch artist, working in pencil and line, before transitioning into painting. Anyone who's tried both will tell you they're very different skills — sketching is about confidence in line, painting is about decisions in color and light. Francisco has excelled at both.
What strikes us most about his work, though, is the way he captures a fleeting moment in time.
Look at the painting of the girl on the pier. She's watching the ferris wheel light up the water, the pink ribbon in her hair the only warm detail in a vast blue evening. We're behind her, looking with her. The wheel hasn't turned yet. The lights haven't shifted. She's still looking. Francisco has caught the exact second before a memory becomes a memory.
Then look at the lighthouse. That sky — pink, gold, and turquoise pouring across the horizon — is what photographers and painters call the blue hour. The brief window just after the sun has dropped below the horizon, when the light does its most dramatic work and is gone before you can say so. Francisco paints that exact moment, with snow on the ground and a lighthouse standing patient against the color.
Both paintings remind us that life is made up of moments like these. Small ones. Brief ones. The kind that slip past if you're not paying attention.
There's something quietly powerful about a mouth painter capturing scenes like these. Mouth painting takes time — every brushstroke is slower than it would be for a hand painter. Francisco has chosen to spend weeks, sometimes months, honoring moments that lasted seconds. The slow practice and the brief subject are in conversation with each other. The whole body of his work seems to be saying: this was worth holding onto.
If you've ever stood on a pier as a child, or watched a sunset that left you speechless, Francisco's paintings will feel like home.
💬 What's a fleeting moment that's stayed with you — one you wish you could paint? See less

05/21/2026

Hmmmm... I guess it is a competition now... OK Tom Yendell Art and Mouth and Foot Painting Artists - UK we shan't be undone... check out Tom's art on a handy dandy cross body bag and mug at https://www.mfpacanada.com/collections/new-print-on-demand

Looking for my artwork? I am so happy to tell you that the UK Mouth and Foot Painting Artists have a new website to sell our fantastic products.
Please have a look....and purchase! https://mymfpashop.co.uk/collections/artist-tom-yendell

05/21/2026

The best kind of before and after! Unfortunately, these mugs are only available in the UK (ugh selfish 😆)... but don't fear! You can purchase your very on MFPA Mug at https://www.mfpacanada.com/collections/new-print-on-demand

Mornings are for coffee and contemplation, so why not wake up with us!
☕☕☕☕

Bazza West here I’m proud to be able to tell you two of my painting have been printed onto mugs and now they are availible to buy here on our new shop

Here is the link to take you there

https://mymfpashop.co.uk/collections/kitchenware?page=3

Lots of other products from mouth and foot painting artist from the uk

05/20/2026

"From Australia to Zimbabwe, our artists are everywhere. 🌍"

MFPA artists work in 74 countries.

A painter in Seoul. A watercolorist in Buenos Aires. An oil painter in Helsinki. A portrait artist in Lagos. A landscape painter in Sonoma County, California.

Different mediums. Different subjects. Different traditions. One association connecting them all.

What strikes us — what we hope strikes you — is how local each artist's work feels. They paint where they live, what they love, the light they know. The result is a global art collection that doesn't look like any one country. It looks like all of them.

One global community, one mission: Self Help, Not Charity

Credits -
1. Spring News- Jin Hyun Song South Korea
2.Margaritas- Cesar Andres Barcia, Argentina
3. Vacation Memories- Mariusz Maczka, Poland
4. JFK - Mariam Paré, USA
5. Instanbul Sunset- Keith Jansz, UK
💛

—