Biography
Born 1979 in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Lives and works in Halifax.
Erin MacLeod grew up in Halifax and worked for ten years as a graphic designer at a regional publisher before leaving in 2014 to paint full time. She had been filling sketchbooks on weekends and holidays since her early twenties, and travel has stayed at the centre of her work: every year she spends four to six weeks in a few cities and landscapes, drawing in ink and watercolour on the spot, then paints larger oils from those sketches back in her Halifax studio.
She works in three modes. The oils on canvas are built from sketches and photographs and finished over several weeks. The watercolours are made mostly on site and left loose. The ink and wash drawings come straight from her sketchbooks, with large areas of bare paper left on purpose. She likes narrow streets, harbour edges, evening light and the people who happen to be in it.
Her work falls into five series: "Sketchbook Cities" (ink and watercolour drawings, since 2019), "City Streets" (street scenes, since 2018), "Waterfronts" (harbours, canals and sea, since 2016), "Open Country" (landscapes, since 2019) and "Still Life & Windows" (quiet interiors, since 2021).
She has shown at the Lunenburg Art Gallery summer show (2016 to 2020), had a solo exhibition at Gallery on Pleasant in Lunenburg (2023) and taken part in several group shows across Nova Scotia. Her paintings are held in private collections in Canada, the United States and the UK.
