"People often ask me why (and sometimes, how) I decided to take up painting. It took a lot of years to figure out, and then to accept, that it was perfectly OK to direct one's interest and energy in pursuit of something as seemingly audacious as painting.  Perhaps it was my love of nature that first drew me to landscape painting. That might sound somewhat of a cliché, but it’s fundamentally true. I have lived some of life’s most perfect moments on the water in the near North. The hope to share these feelings with others - to have others see as I have seen -- is in large measure why I picked up the brush.  Much of painting is about learning this visual language -this means of expression: observing, editing, interpreting, simplifying.  It’s more than mastering the tools and the technique - reading shapes, values, colours, edges. Above all else, it is a state of mind that is achieved when you finally stop ‘looking’ and learn to truly see the beauty that is all around us."

Jamie McGill is primarily a landscape painter, working both in watercolour and oils. Largely self-taught he has attended classes at Humber College, Haliburton School of Fine Arts, Neilson Park Creative Centre, Blue Mountain School of Landscape Painting and Atelier St.Luc in Provence. He has studied under some of North Americas leading painters. The majority of Jamie’s paintings begin as plein air sketches which provide the basis for larger works completed in his West Toronto studio.