Images Studio Tour
Thanksgiving Weekend
Friday October 7 - Monday October 10
10:00 AM to 5:00 PM

Jill Price

A contemporary landscape artist, my work is constantly evolving to explore or capture global issues that affect our culture. Striving to use materials that help to evoke the issues embedded within my subject matter, my most recent body of work combines painting, storytelling, stitching, and digital imagery to visually investigate how our rural landscapes are changing.  Farming communities, still the “fabric of our society”, are rapidly evolving due to a global economy, suburban sprawl and the invasion of new technologies; all of which have changed the way we acquire, look at, work and describe them. Mixed media works entitled Rurbia, play with old and new iconography to document industrialization, technological evolution and the domestication of our landscapes, resulting in the modification of objects, their function, and the roles people play in their presence.

Spending the majority of my childhood in Pickering, Ontario, my family always lived on the edge of suburban development.  This along with a farming background and my parent’s passion for camping, hiking and skiing, generated a true respect and connection with the land that still informs my work today.  Although more of an athlete during my teens, symbolic imagery identified both in films and English literature, as well as children’s books written and illustrated in both my English and Art classes, inspired me to pursue further arts education.  So, in 1988, I moved to London, Ontario, to study Fine Arts at the University of Western Ontario, at which I received instruction and mentoring from many nationally recognized artists such as Duncan De Kergommeaux, Sheila Butler, Wyn Geleynse, Colette Urban, Kim Moodie, Barbara Fischer and Helmut Becker.

After schooling, I chose to remain in London and become an active member of its vibrant artistic community as an artist, arts writer (Scene Magazine), and arts administrator (Forest City Gallery, London Arts Council). Upon meeting my mother's birth mother; a painter residing near Syracuse, New York, I relinquished my arts administrative roles to become more focused on my own work, and so in 1992, along with Beth Stewart, opened up a co-op gallery in the Covent Garden Market called Axis Studios to increase my creative production as well as facilitate other emerging London artists sell and showcase their work.  

In 2006, I had the opportunity to work with local youth, which spurred my application to Althouse College to attain my Ontario Teaching Certificate and complete my Visual Arts Specialist qualifications in 2009.  For three years, I taught visual and language arts at Matthews Hall Independent School, located in London, Ontario. As much as I encouraged the students to find the artist within themselves, they inspired me to follow my dreams and to take the necessary risks to get there. So, during the fall of 2010, I decided to dedicate myself to my practice full-time.  This transition accompanied my move from London to Barrie, Ontario, where I have opened up my own studio in the downtown core on Lakeshore Mews where I work hard to expand my practice and audience into major cultural centres across Canada and abroad.