Living Waters: An Original Landscape Painting Inspired by Ontario Lakes

There are certain places that become part of you. For me, many of those places are on the water.

Living Waters, 30 x 20 inches, oil/canvas.

I spend a lot of time on the lake, and over the years I’ve come to appreciate that what makes a lake beautiful is about so much more than the view. It’s the clean water, the healthy shoreline, fish moving below the surface, birds in the trees, and all the interconnected life that makes a lake a living ecosystem.

That idea became the inspiration for my painting Living Waters, an original oil painting on canvas that I’ve donated to the 2026 Watersheds Canada art raffle.

Living Waters began with a quiet morning on the lake. The sun was filtering through the trees, the water was still, and the only sounds were birdsong and the gentle ripple along the shore.

As I painted, I kept thinking about everything happening beneath that peaceful surface.

This summer, I had the opportunity to be involved in a walleye spawning bed restoration project and to see first-hand some of the thoughtful, hands-on work Watersheds Canada is doing to help protect our lakes and fish habitat.

That experience stayed with me and found its way into the painting.

Detail of Living Waters

If you look closely at the lower right corner of Living Waters, you’ll see a cluster of rocks representing a spawning bed. It’s a small detail, but an important one. A healthy lake isn’t simply a beautiful landscape. It is a living system that supports fish, birds, wildlife, plants and people.

A Little Piece of the Lake

There’s another detail about this painting that makes it particularly meaningful to me.

While creating Living Waters, I used water from the lake itself.

A small piece of the place that inspired the painting is actually part of the artwork. It feels like a small connection between the landscape, the painting and the lake that I care so much about.

In studio

As a landscape artist, I’m always trying to capture more than what a place looks like. I want my paintings to evoke the feeling of being there: the quiet of the water, the warmth of the light, the sense of space and the memories we associate with places we love.

With Living Waters, I also wanted to capture a sense of responsibility for those places.

Supporting Watersheds Canada

My involvement in the spawning bed restoration project gave me an even greater appreciation for the work Watersheds Canada does to protect lakes, wetlands, shorelines and fish habitat.

These are the places that inspire so much of my work as a Canadian landscape artist. They are also places where families gather, where wildlife thrives, and where countless memories are made.

That’s why I’m proud to have Living Waters be part of the Watersheds Canada art raffle. It feels meaningful to have a painting inspired by the lake help support work that protects the very landscapes that inspire me.

The painting is part of the 2026 Watersheds Canada art raffle, giving you a chance to win the original while supporting important conservation work. The raffle also includes a beautiful hand-carved Wood Duck by artist Mike Reader.

👉 Click here for raffle details and your chance to enter.

I hope Living Waters eventually finds its way to someone who feels that same connection to the water, and who understands why the places we love are worth protecting.

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