About Jill

I’m an East Coast Canadian artist and a lot of what I paint is influenced by growing up on the ocean, being a women, and my background in designing spaces.

Growing up in Newfoundland, I spent countless hours on the edge of the Atlantic, sketchbook in hand, fascinated by the possibility of what lay beyond the horizon.  That sense of possibility -the feeling that there is something more just beyond what we can see - continues to run through my work.

My path to becoming a professional artist was a roundabout one. I studied Computer Science and Architecture, earning a Master’s of Architecture from Dalhousie University, then spent a decade and half as a television set designer in Toronto, creating environments for CTV, TSN, CBC, Discovery, W Network and MuchMusic. Later, I owned a custom framing and art gallery business in Chicago.

Those experiences continue to shape the way I paint. I can’t help but think in three dimensions when I work and I often paint the layers I see as “furthest away” from the viewer first and build the colors closer with each layer on top. I also bring my sense of scale, colour, composition, and proportion to encourage the feeling of movement - from my years of designing spaces to look dynamic, have more depth, when seen onscreen. (Long before the screens we watched were in our hands!)

Strong Women, Wild Water, Possibilities on the Horizon!

My large-scale seascapes explore the movement, luminosity and vastness of the water, and the feeling of standing at the edge of (or being immersed in) something larger and wilder than ourselves.

My paintings of women explore strength, resilience and possibility. I paint women as whole, complex people, across ages, shapes and stages of life, seen through a distinctly female gaze. And, if you’re a fan of mine you may have heard my motto, “If you are at the beach and you have a body, YOU have a beach body!”

At the heart of all my work is my belief in possibilities and power: the freedom to be who you are, to imagine something more, and the power to make it happen.