Artist.  A loner and shy person, he spent almost his whole life in Winnipeg painting, drawing and sketching quiet contemplative scenes.  He spent his childhood summers on his grandmother’s Manitoba farm where he developed a deep love for Canada’s prairies.  He studied art in Winnipeg, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and then in New York City, New York at the Art Students League of New York.  He returned to Winnipeg in July 1922 to work as a commercial illustrator until 1924, when he began teaching at the Winnipeg School of Art.  In 1929 he was promoted to principal of the school, a position he held until 1947.  Following an exhibition of his paintings in Toronto, Ontario, Canada in 1928, he was invited to exhibit with the Group of Seven, a group of Canadian landscape painters from 1920 to 1933, originally consisting of Franklin Carmichael,  Lawren Harris, A. Y. Jackson, Frank Johnston, Arthur Lismer, J. E. H. MacDonald, and Frederick Varley.  In 1930 he exhibited his art works in two shows with the Group  and was invited to become a member in 1932 after the death of J. E. H. MacDonald, and was the only western Canadian artist to become a member of the Group.  He was a founding member of the Group’s successor, the Canadian Group of Painters.  He died of a heart attack in Winnipeg.  In 2003, the Royal Canadian Mint produced a gold coin based on his 1929 work “Houses.” (bio by: William Bjornstad)