A Visual Storyteller Painting Unique Canadian Art

Canadian art is often synonymous with the landscape. When we talk about Canadian art and the genres most closely associated with it, many of us immediately think of landscape painting. From traditional interpretations to contemporary and pop art-inspired approaches, the landscape has become an important visual language for generations of Canadian artists.

For me, painting unique Canadian art means painting adjacent to the landscape. Canada is a vast country, shaped by an extraordinary amount of land, water and wilderness. It is no wonder that the landscape finds its way into so much of our visual culture. I celebrate the story of the landscape in my own work, but I approach it differently. I am not a traditional landscape painter, and a pure landscape, on its own, rarely tells the whole story I want to tell. Instead, I think about the landscape as a stage. It becomes something figurative, something that helps move a story forward. I am interested in our relationship with the land, but I am equally interested in the stories that happen within it: the people, animals, symbols, objects and fragments of pop culture that give a place meaning.

This is where my work begins to move beyond traditional landscape painting. I observe the landscape, play within it and allow it to wash over me. I might take a familiar Canadian symbol and place it within an unexpected landscape. I might introduce a polar bear, a hockey reference, a person, a bold graphic element or a recognizable Canadian object. Sometimes the landscape is the subject. Other times, it is the backdrop, the setting or even a character within the story.

Over more than twenty years and 400 paintings, I have allowed myself the freedom to move between landscape, portraiture, still life, abstraction and pop art. Sometimes these genres exist independently. Other times, they collide within a single painting. That freedom is an important part of my practice. I don’t want to be confined to one subject or one visual language. Canada itself is too expansive for that.

Unique Canadian Art: Painting in Series

I often work in series, allowing an idea to unfold across four to six paintings. A single thought can take on different forms as I explore it, with each painting becoming another chapter in the story. Some ideas, however, refuse to stay within a small series.

Over the years, I have developed bodies of work that continue to reappear and evolve. My Polar Bear King paintings, for example, have grown into a significant series with dozens of paintings exploring the polar bear as both an iconic Canadian animal and a character with his own story. My paintings incorporating Hudson’s Bay stripes have similarly become an ongoing visual exploration of one of Canada’s most recognizable symbols.

These recurring subjects allow me to return to familiar Canadian imagery while continuing to find new ways of seeing it.

For me, this is what makes painting unique Canadian art so compelling. It isn’t simply about painting what Canada looks like. It is about exploring what Canada means, what we recognize as Canadian, and the stories we attach to the land, its people, animals, symbols and culture.

Over the past twenty years, I have developed many different series that explore these ideas. Here are several of them:

Hockey Paintings

Polar Bear Paintings

Canoe Paintings

Canadian Interventions Collection

HBC Collection

Canadian Portrait Paintings