About Jamie

I fell in love with art when my dad came home from a work trip and handed my brothers and me each a sketchbook. We were living in a small corner of Scotland back then. Mine had a red leather cover that stood out, and for some reason that made it feel special.

I filled it with messy sketches of whatever caught my imagination. Sometimes my dad would lean over and show me how to draw something I couldn’t quite figure out. That red sketchbook opened a door into imagination and possibility—and I never really closed it.

I spent a lot of my childhood in Scotland and later studied at the Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary. Now I live and paint in Edmonton. Most of my ideas are inspired by nature: the land, the weather, the wildlife, and the people I meet. I try to hold onto what lingers after the moment’s gone, painting the feeling more than the likeness.

In the studio, a painting usually starts from something in my sketchbook. I mostly work with oil on canvas, building things up slowly—drawing, pouring, layering, wiping away—until it starts to find its own balance. I like when things stay a little open or unresolved; it keeps the work alive.