Meet The Artists

On the shores of Algonquin Park’s Canoe Lake is a memorial to renowned Canadian plein air painter Tom Thomson that reads, in part, “He lived humbly but passionately with the wild. It made him brother to all untamed things….”

The art of plein air painting is as worthy of celebration today as it was for Tom Thomson and Canada’s Group of Seven artists in the early 20th century. More than a hundred years later, a new group of Ontario artists—James Aitken, Peter Adams, Mark Berens, Jonathan Houghton, Paul Nabuurs, Andrew Peycha, Peter Taylor, Bryan Wall, Rob Saley and renowned photographer Gary Mcguffin —continue to pay poetic tribute to the ever-changing natural landscape as witnessed in real time via plein air.

Back in the studio, each of these plein air sketches is developed onto a large canvas—novels, by comparison, to tell the story once again, the artist having had the opportunity to ruminate upon it, to develop it more critically, and to bring the profound sense of the open air even more powerfully to the canvas.

This new group of artists has its sights set on the Ontario landscapes that have long captured the artistic imagination—its pine trees and provincial parks, rocks and rivers, lichen and uncommonly large bodies of fresh water—as well as landscapes the world has yet to see through plein air. The bonds they have built observing of this unique and spiritual part of Canada, celebrating it and one another, run deep.

Together, this group is called Untamed Things.

For more detailed information on each artist, check out the website below: