The Vancouver Island Perspective: What Makes a Painting Canadian?

What makes a painting Canadian? Is it a maple leaf? A hockey player? A mountain? A moose standing in a snow-covered forest?

Perhaps.

But I think it can also be something much less obvious. After nearly two decades of painting Canada, I have spent a lot of time thinking about what makes an artwork feel Canadian. I have painted many of the symbols we immediately associate with this country: hockey, polar bears, maple leaves, Hudson's Bay stripes, mountains, wildlife and the Canadian flag. Yet the longer I paint, the less interested I become in defining Canadian art by a checklist of recognizable symbols.

For me, Canadian art is ultimately about place, experience, memory and the stories we attach to them.

Canada Is Not One Landscape

Canada is an enormous country. The landscape I experience on Vancouver Island is vastly different from the landscape of the Prairies, the Arctic, the Atlantic coast or the Rocky Mountains. Even within British Columbia, the experience of living beside the Salish Sea is different from living in the Interior or the North. And yet all of these places contribute to our understanding of Canada. This is one of the things I find so compelling about Canadian art. There isn't one Canadian landscape.

There isn't one Canadian story. There isn't even one Canadian way of seeing. Canadian artists have always responded to the places they inhabit, but those responses can look dramatically different. One artist may paint a literal landscape. Another may work with abstraction. Another may use photography, sculpture, textiles, installation or digital media.

The subject matter and the materials may change, but the relationship to place can remain at the centre.

The Landscape Is More Than What We See

I have never really considered myself a traditional landscape painter. I am interested in the landscape, but I am often more interested in the stories we attach to it. A mountain can be a mountain, but it can also represent memory, adventure, wilderness or home. The ocean can be a geographical feature, but for someone living on Vancouver Island it can also be a daily presence, a source of livelihood, a place of recreation, a boundary, a connection or a constant reminder of our relationship with nature.

A raven can simply be a bird. Or it can become a symbol, a character, a memory or a messenger. This is why I often describe my own work as painting stories of the landscape rather than simply painting the landscape. For me, the landscape is not a backdrop. It is part of the story.

Canadian Symbols Carry Memory

I have always been fascinated by Canadian iconography. The maple leaf, hockey, The Hudson's Bay blanket, The Canadian flag, Canoes, Mountains, Wildlife and The coast.

These symbols are powerful because we recognize them almost instantly. But recognition is only the beginning. A symbol carries personal and collective memory. A hockey jersey might take one person back to Saturday nights watching a game with their family. A maple leaf might evoke national pride, childhood memories or a more complicated understanding of Canadian history. A Hudson's Bay blanket can be a familiar object in a Canadian home while also carrying layers of cultural and colonial history. The meaning of an image can change depending on who is looking at it. That is what interests me as an artist. I don't want to simply reproduce a Canadian symbol. I want to ask what happens when we place that symbol into a new context.

What does it mean to us now?

Canadian Art Can Be Complicated

I think it is important that Canadian art doesn't always present a picture-postcard version of Canada. Art can celebrate a place while also questioning it. It can explore beauty alongside difficult histories. It can examine our relationship with the land, wildlife, climate, culture and identity. It can ask who has traditionally been represented in our national stories and whose stories have been left out.

For me, this is part of what makes contemporary Canadian art so interesting. We are not simply painting the Canada of the past. We are responding to the Canada we are living in now.

A West Coast Perspective

After moving my home and studio from Victoria to Parksville in 2025, I have found myself looking at Canada through an even stronger West Coast lens. The Salish Sea has become part of my visual vocabulary.

Orcas, ravens, eagles, sea lions, mountains, beaches, mist and water are appearing in a new body of work. I walk the beaches near my studio, watch the tide move across the sand and notice the changing light on the mountains.

These experiences are influencing what I paint. But they are also influencing how I paint.

My current Pacific coastal paintings are not intended to be literal records of a particular beach or viewpoint. I simplify forms, heighten colour and use movement and composition to communicate something about the experience of being in this landscape. The painting becomes less about documenting a location and more about conveying a feeling of place. That, to me, is an important part of Canadian landscape painting.

What About Oceanside?

Living and working in the Oceanside region gives us a particularly interesting perspective on the question of Canadian art.

We are surrounded by an extraordinary landscape.

These are not simply scenic elements. They are part of daily life for the people who live here. Artists respond to this environment in countless ways. A painter may respond to the quality of West Coast light. A photographer may document changing shorelines. A ceramic artist may draw inspiration from local geology. A sculptor may work with materials connected to the landscape. A writer may build a story around a particular place. 

Perhaps what makes a painting Canadian is not that it looks like Canada.

Perhaps it is that, in some way, it tells us something about what it means to experience Canada.

And that story is still being painted.