Alex Cameron

Alex Cameron (May 06, 1947 June 17, 2025) was a painter living and working in Toronto, Ontario. He was a member of what has been described as the third generation of artists inspired in their painting style by Jack Bush. While visiting his uncle in New York City, Cameron was introduced to American abstract expressionist painting. Cameron studied at the New School of Art with Graham Coughtry, Gordon Rayner, Dennis Burton and Robert Markle. While in school, Cameron focused on formal planning and carefully drawn sketches before applying paint to a canvas. Bush is said to have influenced Cameron's "lyrical semi-abstract painting style", as well as his thick impasto application of paint. Through Bush, Cameron met and maintained an ongoing, close relationship with the art critic Clement Greenberg. Bush, Painters Eleven and the Group of Seven, Cameron's paintings primarily featured brightly colored, abstractions, which can be seen in his later work as landscapes. According to Cameron, he began his career as an artist in 1969. The artist's early works in the 1970s were "flat, unmodulated fields of color transversed by sketchy cartoon-like drawing", In the early 1980s Cameron's style developed into the "long horizontal and vertical lines of color punctuated by curves, squiggles and free hand geometry" that can be seen in his later landscapes. "The suggestion of trees or horizon is often roughly preserved but the real business of the paintings is the rhythm of line, mass, depth and color".

What separates Cameron from other abstract artists is his concern with "creating the illusion of depth and dimension on a two-dimensional surface".

Speaking of his own compositions, Alex Cameron described his skies as "colour fields", explaining that he "has a sky just so [he] can stick stuff in it".

With increased impasto, Cameron painted by "squeezing paint out of tubes in finger-width squiggles, dashes and dots". The artist churned out, on average, one painting a week, but was able to create pieces from start to finish very quickly. He was known to finish a 6 x 6 ft. work in one day. All of Cameron's titles were invented after the work was completed.

His process was a combination of painting en plein air and using his mind's eye to create his brightly coloured landscapes. Cameron traveled to the remote areas of the Northwest Territories, the Yukon, British Columbia, Algonquin Provincial Park and Nepal and India, often accompanied by David Bolduc. If Cameron was able, he would paint on the spot, or make tiny watercolour sketches to later work up in his Toronto studio. Alternatively, he held onto the images from his travels in his mind and transferred them to canvas, choosing the colours to portray the scenes in a different light. as well as Han Modern and Contemporary in Montreal.

Cameron had a stroke in 2012 which made his right arm useless, but continued to paint with one hand. In 2025, after another happy morning painting in his Toronto studio, Alex was badly injured when he tripped and fell at a nearby intersection. Rushed to hospital, he received excellent care but the large painting he was working on that morning, Big Dipper, will never be finished. He died on June 17, 2025 near his studio in Toronto.

Cameron had a street named after him in Sarnia, Ontario ("Alex Cameron Court").

Selected solo exhibitions Alex Cameron's first public show was at A Space in 1971. 1971 – A Space, Toronto, ON; 1985 – Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa, ON; Numerous shows followed at private art galleries such as Bau-Xi Gallery, Toronto and Vancouver.

Selected public collections

Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto (Wheels for Johnny Staccato (1976); Judith and Norman Alix Gallery, Sarnia (3 works); Kitchener-Wayerloo Art Gallery; Office of the Prime Minister of Canada, Ottawa (3 works); The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa (6 works); Tom Thomson Gallery, Owen Sound; University of Lethbridge Art Gallery (13 works); Cameron's work is also in a large number of corporate collections.