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Eyelevel Gallery (ELG) was founded in 1974 by a group of artists formerly associated with Inventions Gallery. Inventions was established on West Street in 1972 by a group of local female artists. The Gallery moved to 1812 Granville Street shortly after opening and was destroyed by a fire in 1974. When the gallery moved due to the fire, members decided to extend membership to male artists and change the gallery’s name.

Eyelevel Gallery has always been located in Halifax, predominately in the downtown core, but it has moved locations ten times since 1974. The gallery was briefly located at Pier One Theatre at 2158 Upper Water Street, but was forced to move to 5785 West Street before the first exhibition, Peggy's Cove Syndrome. In late 1975, the gallery moved to the second floor of the Marble Building at 1672 Barrington Street. It moved to the Green Lantern Building on Barrington Street ca. 1978 and moved to Gottingen Street in 1986. In 1993, it returned to Barrington Street in the third floor of the Marble Building, where it remained until 2000. The gallery moved back to the Green Lantern Building (in the ground floor) until 2004, when it moved to 2128 Gottingen Street. It stayed in this location until 2007. The gallery moved to another location across the street and then moved to 2159 Gottingen Street in 2011. In December 2013, the gallery moved to 5663 Cornwallis Street and dedicated its program to projects outside the formal gallery.

Since its founding, Eyelevel Gallery has been an organization run by artists for artists. The gallery has offered an alternative space for contemporary art, provided exhibition space for local, national, and international artists, featured the works of emerging and established artists, offered workshops, provided a venue for theatre, music, and dance performances, sponsored visiting artists, and later housed a resource centre. The gallery has always operated as a non-profit organization committed to the “presentation, development and promotion of contemporary art” (Eyelevel Gallery “Mission”). Eyelevel Gallery has also made an effort to display innovative, not necessarily saleable, work that stretches artistic boundaries and challenges the status quo. In addition, its commitment to contemporary art in general helped the development of two other now independent arts organizations: Live Art Dance and the Centre for Art Tapes. As with other arts organizations, understaffing and inadequate funding have been ongoing problems for Eyelevel Gallery. Although the gallery receives funding from a number of sources, including membership fees and grants from the Canada Council and the Nova Scotia Department of Tourism and Culture, fluctuating funding levels have sometimes led to program or operational changes.

Eyelevel Gallery is managed by a board of directors, a number of committees, and a gallery director. Although the organization, responsibilities, and sometimes even titles of these groups have changed overtime, the board of directors has always maintained the ultimate authority within the administrative structure. Committees oversee the various responsibilities of the board including finance, membership, staff, curatorial space, and fundraising. The gallery director is responsible to the board and carries out their actions and policies, creates and circulates press releases and proposals, and manages the day-to-day activities of the gallery.

Directors of Eyelvel Gallery include Julia Schmitt Healy (1974-1975), David Sayer (1975), Susan Beaver (1975-1976), Garry Conway (1976-1977), Marina Stewart (1977-?), Michael Fernandes (?-1982), David Craig (1982-1986), Melodie Calvert (1986-?), Catherine Phoenix (1988-1992), Ann Verrall (1988-1990), Susan Bustin (1992-1994), Andrea Ward (1994-1995), Moritz Gaede (1996-1999), Melissa Kuntz (1999-?), David Diviney (1999-2002), Svava Juliusson (200-?), Jennifer Dorner (2002-200-?), Christine Kellner (2004), Svava Juluisson (2004-2005), Eryn Foster (2006-2009), Michael McCormick (May 2009- August 2013), and Katie Belcher (August 2013-).

Christine Eyles was a friend and roommate of Alan Creighton's. She was born in England on July 28, 1900, the daughter of Charles ("Chas") Eyles, a violin maker, and Emma Lucas, a miniaturist and watercolour painter.

Christine was a gifted violinist and graduated as a performer from the Royal College of Music. She was a professional musician from the 1920s to 1950s. In the 1920s, she played with the Bournemouth and BBC Symphony Orchestras. Upon immigrating to Canada in 1930, she played with the Toronto and CBC Symphony Orchestras until the 1950s and the Promenade Symphony throughout her life. In 1969, Christine was awarded a lifetime membership in the Toronto Musicians' Association. She was also noted for being an artist and a poet, with her paintings described as "mystical-abstract." Christine Eyles died in Toronto, Ontario on March 2, 1978 at the age of seventy-seven.

George Farquhar was born 17 July 1880 in Wetherby, England, to James and Margaret Ann MacDonald Farquhar. He came to Canada in 1883 and attended public school in Windsor and then Dalhousie University where he earned a B.A. (1907), M.A. (1910), and L.L.B. (1927). He also studied at Pine Hill in Halifax, Edinburgh, and Halle a Salle, Germany. Farquhar married Ruby M. Duffus in 1917 with whom he had three children: Margaret, Mary and Ian.

Farquhar’s career varied from working as a pastor, a newspaper editor, and a civil servant. He was ordained as a minister in 1910 and served as a pastor in Hampton, New Brunswick, (1910-1912) and assistant pastor in Winnipeg (1913-1914) before enlisting to serve in World War I in 1915. He then traveled to England (1916), France (1917-1918), and Russia (1918-1919). Following the war, Farquhar returned to Nova Scotia and worked as a pastor in New Glasgow from 1919-1925.

In 1927 Farquhar was admitted to the Nova Scotia bar but only two years later became editor-in-chief of the Halifax Chronicle. He remained with the paper until 1938 and between 1926 and 1927 wrote a column called “Men and Things.” From 1938 until he retired in 1953, Farquhar served as a member of the Nova Scotia Public Utilities Board.

In addition to these activities, Farquhar was involved with local community organizations, including the Nova Scotia Historical Society and the North British Society. He also sat on Dalhousie’s Board of Governors from about 1941 to 1953.

Charles Fenerty was born in 1821 in Springfield Lake, Nova Scotia, the second son of James Fenerty and Elizabeth Lawson, farmers and sawyers. He is most well known as the first inventor of wood pulp paper, although no commercial success came out of his own discoveries. He subsequently turned to writing verse and took first prize at the Nova Scotia industrial exhibition in 1854 for “Betula Nigra,” a poem celebrating a giant black birch on the family farm.

Fenerty moved to Australia in the late 1850s, where he may have worked in the goldmining industry. After his return to Nova Scotia he married Ann Maria Hamilton in 1868 and farmed in the Sackville area. At various times he served as health warden for his district, measurer of wood, overseer of the poor, and county tax collector. He was also active in the Anglican Church as a lay reader. He was a staunch Conservative, supported the temperance cause, and opposed tobacco smoking. He died in 1892 in Sackville, Nova Scotia.

Roscoe Fillmore was an horticulturalist, author and political activist. He was a principle organizer for the Socialist Party of Canada in the Maritimes before World War One and joined the Communist Party of Canada in the early 1920s. Born in Lumsden, New Brunswick, on 10 July 1887, in 1923 he spent time at an experimental farm in Kuzas, Siberia, working as an horticultural expert. He was president of the New Brunswick Fruit Growers' Association before losing his job as a large orchard manager in 1924 and moving his family (wife, Margaret, and children, Dick, Ruth, Rosa and Alexandra) to Centreville, Nova Scotia. He built a house and a nursery, and in 1938 became Head Gardener for the Dominion Atlantic Railway, where he was also responsible for gardening at the Grand Pré Memorial Park.

Fillmore was politically active in Centreville and a strong supporter of socialist causes. He wrote numerous political articles for magazines and, with Charles MacDonald, Frank Parry and Jim Sim, he helped to form the Centreville Socialists, a small group that met on Sundays at Sim's residence to discuss politics and government. When the Communist Party of Canada was banned in 1940, Fillmore helped refound the party as the Labour-Progressive Party of Canada. In the 1945 federal election he ran as the Farmer-Labour Candidate in the Digby-Annapolis-Kings riding. He received 362 (1.4%) of the 25,944 votes cast. The Centreville Socialists met regularly until 1951 when Jim Sim died.

After the Centreville Socialists broke up, Fillmore and Parry focused on developing Valley Nurseries. Fillmore developed new plant varieties suitable for Nova Scotia's climate. He also published four books on gardening, which were written without the obscure terminology found in many contemporaneous gardening books, and he became a popular speaker on radio and across Canada under the nickname "Mr. Green Thumbs." Fillmore renounced the Labour-Progressive Party of Canada in the 1950s, but continued to remain politically active until his death in 1968. Since 1978, semi-annual picnics have been held in his honour.