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Painting

Jill Thomson

Warm Urban Winter Alberta

Hopscotching through the homes of city dwellers on a winter afternoon, catching glimpses through windows while walking through the neighbourhood.

Jill Thomson’s Warm Urban Winter Alberta is a journey through the interior and exterior worlds of Albertans in winter. “I love engagement between inside and outside. The warmth of an interior kitchen set right beside the bright, crisp clarity of the snow and the light in Alberta in the winter months,” Thomson says. The scene, depicted on a 40x40 square canvas, shows some of the ways urban Albertans enjoy the winter season, from skating to playing music, baking at home and gathering in cafes.

“There are all these things going on at the same time,” Thomson says. “People meeting in a local park to go skating, right in their neighbourhood; a woman creatively cooking something amazing in her kitchen; this man playing jazz on his piano with his dog resting beside him; shopping at the market and then having a great conversation with friends at a local eatery. All these different paces and cycles of life happening at the same time.”

Thomson, an Alberta resident and practicing artist for over 30 years, has long honed her specific style of revealing the inner worlds of neighbourhoods, making for paintings full of familiar warmth. This visual language she’s developed works particularly well when depicting Alberta’s capital in the colder months, as Thomson believes Edmonton residents embrace the winter by continuing to make the outdoors a vital part of their everyday lives.

A proponent of community involvement, Thomson uses her paintings to highlight the ways local spaces can serve as extensions of the home. “As an artist, I crave winter hibernating time for working in my studio, but I love to engage creatively with the local community and the outdoors, which is so doable in Alberta,” she says. In Warm Urban Winter Alberta, we see the Old Strathcona Farmers Market as a kind of beacon, the yellow tones drawing the eye to the kitchen of a solitary baker. The movement in the artwork allows the viewer to trace the voyage from community space back home, where the warmth of that home is celebrated.

Thomson uses walnut oil, a stable and rich medium that allows her a more fluid painting experience that can change and evolve as she adds to her canvas. This fluidity is evident in the way the eye is drawn around the space, taking in the many ways people find warmth in the colder months. The crisp quality of Alberta’s light—the “big sky country” feeling—that Thomson captures in her work speaks to the sense of expansiveness she finds in her surroundings, which is also reflected in the colour palette of the work.

Thomson believes Edmonton residents embrace the winter by continuing to make the outdoors a vital part of their everyday lives.

Thomson takes her inspiration from the city she loves, from her own family, and from personal experiences, though that doesn’t stop her paintings from having a universal quality. With both her sisters working as jazz musicians, she considers herself an improviser in her own right, responding to the painting as it evolves. The sense of spatiality imbued in her work draws the viewer in, and asks them to move through the painting as if through a neighbourhood itself.

Trees such as Mountain Ash and Cedar Waxwing, staples of Edmonton yards, are present in the scene, a reminder that while much of the province remains dormant in the winter months, there’s still so much life and spirit present. This much is also true of the people who live there—who aren’t afraid of winter, but rather embrace it fully.

About Jill

Jill Thomson's artwork evokes her personal history of a small town/prairie childhood, an urban Montreal young adulthood and a settled life as artist and mother of three in Edmonton. Her rich colourful palette and complex compositions celebrate a creative life in cities with urban gardens, generous front porches, cafes, bookstores, bicycle paths, and ravines. She is currently working on a series of Urban Garden paintings for her MA in Human Ecology at University of Alberta. She received her BFA from Concordia University in Montreal. She is represented by Gibson Fine Art in Calgary and AGA Art Rental and Sales in Edmonton.

This content was produced by The Globe and Mail’s Globe Content Studio on behalf of Travel Alberta. The Globe’s editorial department was not involved.

CREDITS: Concept and editing by JESSICA ROBINSON; Art direction and design by JEANINE BRITO; Development by KYLE YOUNG and JEANINE BRITO; Project management by CHRISTINA LIPPA

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