Al Mowat didn’t start out to be an artist. Following a three-year wartime stint with the Royal Canadian Air Force he took a business degree and went to work for the Hudson’s Bay Company.

But he loved the outdoors, and he loved to travel. He and his wife Doris have motor-homed the North American continent, coast-to-coast, on three different occasions, giving them, as Al says: “lots of adventures, lots of great pictures, and lots of wonderful scenery”.

Long an admirer of the work of Emily Carr and the Group of Seven, Al decided to teach himself to paint. Starting with water colours and graduating to oils, for the past ten years he has worked almost exclusively in acrylics, producing on canvas, art board and glass.

As his attic studio filled with art pieces, friends began to ask for samples of his work. Showings to church and community groups spawned a coterie of interested clients who found Al’s self-taught style both whimsical and intriguing. He began to sell some of his paintings.

Al’s main interest is in landscapes, trees, coastal scenes and village settings. Always experimenting he has studied the techniques of some of the master painters, such as Matisse and Van Gogh. The results are variety of styles in Al’s paintings, but always the personal whimsical touch shows through.

His paintings now have found homes in locations as varied as Halifax, London, Edmonton, Calgary, Victoria and Vancouver. Through his website, he is now making this unique art available to a wider constituency of art lovers.