Jock Macdonald

full name: James Williamson Galloway Macdonald // Macdonald was painter and teacher whose colorful works were among the first abstract paintings created in Canada. James Williamson Galloway Macdonald was born in Thurso, Scotland, and trained in commercial art at the Edinburgh College of Art. He immigrated to Canada in 1926 to teach at the Vancouver School of Art. There, under the guidance of a colleague, Fred Varley, Macdonald took up oil painting. Although he initially painted landscapes, by 1935 he was experimenting with abstraction and producing paintings based on nature but abstract in form.

In 1946 Macdonald moved to Toronto to teach at the Ontario College of Art, where he influenced a generation of younger painters. Although he was much older than his students, he was later invited to exhibit with some of them in the Painters Eleven, a group of abstract painters.