David Jamieson began studying drawing and painting in 1996 at the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto. He went on to receive an MFA cum laude from the New York Academy of Art, where he was awarded the first Prince of Wales Scholarship from that institution in 2000.

He has taught figurative drawing, painting and anatomy to undergraduate, graduate and private students in Toronto, Chicago, New York City, and at The King’s Foundation in London, England. His work has been featured in American Artist Drawing Magazine and Poets & Artists Magazine. In 2016, David was named a semi-finalist in the Outwin-Boochever Portrait Competition hosted by the Smithsonian, and in 2024 he was a finalist in the Portrait Society of America’s International Competition. His work is included in the collection of His Majesty King Charles III, in the permanent collection of the Fort Wayne Museum of Art, and other private collections in Canada and the United States.

David is a co-founder and primary instructor at Vitruvian Fine Art Studio, where he has taught drawing, painting and anatomy since 2006. David lives with his wife, artist Melinda Whitmore, in Oak Park, Illinois.

Realist artwork is the product of both observation and reflection by the artist. Every image is an articulation of shape, form, space and light that are the syntax of a language perfectly suited to describing visual experiences. “Here is something beautiful.” says the artist as observer, as objective witness to the physical world.

But realism in art is more than mere description. Even the most faithful representation is not simply a record of nature, but a construction assembled by the eye, the mind, and the hand of an individual. What materializes on the page or canvas is unique–no other person, in any time or place, could produce the same result. Even the most prosaic of subjects can be rendered in a singular way because the artist leaves their own imprint behind. In this way, every work is a kind of portrait of the human being who made it, which is why hand-made artwork remains compelling despite recent technological advancements in image-making. Each artwork offers its own combination of how something looks and how it looks to the artist.

The Canadian painter Alex Colville has rightly observed that while a photograph is taken, a painting is made. I feel this is an important distinction that lies at the heart of my continued fascination with realism.