Artist Biography
As a child, I explored both directions of the train track, which lay outside of Watford, a small southwestern Ontario village. When entering my teen years my family moved to the suburbs of London, Ontario. There I completed my school studies and worked at a greenhouse that supported my photographic adventures.
After completing a year of a photography college course, I left to bicycle across the United States - London, Ontario to San Diego, California.
A month after turning twenty, I went north, into the Canadian arctic to work for the Hudson Bay Company and soon became manager of the Rankin Inlet post. After five adventurous years with the HBC, I left the company to work two years for the competition, The Arctic Co-ops. Working in Rankin Inlet and managing the Co-op in Eskimo Point, now named Arviat. Then returned back to Rankin Inlet to manage two companies for seven years, a heavy equipment company and a snowmobile dealership called Yvo Airut Enterprises Ltd and Y& C Enterprises Ltd.
A strong desire to pursue photography at a stronger level brought a major switch in jobs, so I could continue to create and experiment with photography. I worked semi part time for five years with a fuel tank construction company, Nortuk Construction and stayed home to look after our then two young boys, while my wife re entered the work force.
I continued to create images in an area, where now I had lived for half of my life. I started exhibiting my images, in the Northwest Territories, Toronto and had my prints critically reviewed at the 1996 FotoFest, Houston, Texas.
Rushing back from FotoFest to find my wife in Winnipeg's Medical Intensive Care Unit, knocking on death's door for four weeks, then months of recovery. Theresie's recovery from a strange pneumonia virus was successful.
Creating the Jimmy Mac Donald internet web site, drove me into the digital age with the awe and wow of the internet even the frustration of the internet. I was over come. I was addicted to the communication power of the internet.
Photography. Internet. Art marketing. I wanted to know how they all fit together.
I did put my photography to part time over the past few years as I explored marketing on the internet. I became an affiliate of internet companies selling books to golf clubs to niche databases. I discovered how the internet keyword universe worked.
Magazines and newspapers who have come across my images on the internet are showing an interest in my visual view. I continue to be very involved with my volunteer work with minor hockey across the arctic and Rankin Inlet for boys and girls.
Into The Future
The old invisible urge to once again get back into my photography has come again. Something, I have not yet figured out, why photography has stayed with me throughout my life. Maybe it is not for my words to express but instead for the images to become your own worlds.
As I enter into 2004 and beyond my photographic direction is to obtain a major photographic commission to photograph the land and the people entering into 2005 and beyond.
Imagine a body of photographic work similar to the times of one hundred years ago, when railroad companies, mines and banks commissioned photographers to photograph the land and the people.
Come by the exhibition and say hi. Explore the JimmyMacDonald.com website. Be a future image for centuries. Become one of my collectors from around the world.
Come enter into a photograph.
Thank you. Enjoy your discoveries. Have fun.
Jimmy Mac Donald
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