James Aitken
James Aitken
“James Aitken paints the places most people only fly over.”
More About MeA landscape painter based in Toronto, Collingwood, and the Mink Islands, Aitken works almost exclusively en plein air, hauling his kit across hundreds of kilometres of Ontario's most remote terrain to paint it on-site. Georgian Bay. Lake Superior. James Bay, deep in the Boreal forest of black spruce, birch, and balsam. Isolation isn't a hardship for him; it's where the work is born of.
He trained in landscape and oil painting at the Academy of Art Canada in Toronto, and today splits his time between studios in Toronto, Collingwood and on the Mink Islands. He chairs the Onakawana Education Fund, which brings Ontario youth to Camp Onakawana on the Abitibi River to learn traditional First Nations land-based knowledge, work he sees as inseparable from his commitment to Canadian landscape art.
En Plein Air
Derived from the French phrase meaning "in the open air," En plein air is an immersive method where the artist trades the controlled lighting of a studio for the dynamic, shifting beauty of the natural world. The practice became possible in the mid-nineteenth century with the invention of metal paint tubes which allowed painters to venture into the subject itself, capturing rugged, isolated landscapes previously unseen.
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
Landscapes
The Gallery
Please use the contact form to inquire about availability and upcoming exhibitions.
Onakawana
James Aiken is the active Chair of the Onakawana Education Fund, a land-based Indigenous learning initiative for young people, rooted in the traditional knowledge of the Moose Cree First Nation. Each year, the fund provides an opportunity for approximately 100 Indigenous youth from across Ontario to visit Camp Onakawana in the wild and beautiful James Bay lowlands, cost free.
To date, more than 3,000 young people have participated in the Camp Onakawana experience.
In the fall of 2023, Aitken, along with the artist’s collective Untamed Things, visited Camp Onakanawa to capture the rugged, beautiful landscape north of the Great Lake watershed, in the James Bay lowlands. The work created on that expedition was showcased in the exhibition “Untamed Onakanawa” where the proceeds raised benefitted the Onakanawa Education Fund.
