Canadian artist David McEown was born in 1963 in Toronto. The love of art and nature was influenced early from his great grandparents homestead, set amongst the Precambrian rock and lakes of the Muskoka region, as well as from early years residing on Canada’s west coast.

While attending the Ontario College of Art and Design, David spent his graduating year of independent studies at the Algoma School of Landscape Arts in the remote wilderness of Northern Ontario, a region steeped in Indigenous culture and Canadian landscape painting art history.

After five years painting from an Algoma cabin, he painted a large body of work of brilliantly light-filled watercolours celebrating the wonder and regenerative powers found in nature.  For this work, David was awarded the Elizabeth Greenshield Foundation Grant in 1994 and in 1999, which afforded him the opportunity to paint some of this earth’s most remote and endangered landscapes.  To further enhance these studies, from 2005-09 David has been circumnavigating the Arctic Ocean and Antarctica on board various expedition icebreakers as well as skied and painted at the North Pole in 2009.

In 1999, David was elected a member of the Canadian Society of Painters in Watercolour, which in 2005, awarded him the society’s prestigious A.J. Casson Medal.  David’s work has won numerous awards and has been exhibited across Canada and internationally.  His watercolours can be found in many public and corporate collections.   Currently residing in Vancouver, B.C, David returns back to Ontario every year and teaches watercolour at the Royal Ontario Museum as well as conducts many workshops and presentations across Canada, sharing his passion to celebrate and bring an awareness of our diverse yet fragile natural heritage through the creative act of painting.

"This experience is healing.  The process of painting in the ancient groves or from a blade of grass always gives me a feeling of being connected to something greater than ourselves, a sense of love flows through nature with all of it's interrelationships"

David McEown

CSPWC    AOCAD