Watercolour artist and author Dwayne James lives in Peterborough, Ontario where he writes and paints as often as he can, that is when he’s not spending time with his young daughter, toddler twin boys, and his very forgiving wife.
Dwayne has a Masters Degree in archaeology, something he claims is definitive proof that he knows how to write creatively. “Indeed, the most important skill I learned in university,” he posits, “is the ability to pretentiously write about myself in the third person.”
With no formal art training, Dwayne has always preferred the self-guided, experimental approach. In fact, he taught himself how to illustrate archaeological artifacts while completing his Master’s degree at Trent University. Said his thesis supervisor at the time: “There might not be much in the way of coherent theoretical content in Dwayne’s thesis, but damn, it looks pretty!”
Dwayne had played with watercolours a little in his life, but it has only been in the last few years that he truly began to experiment and develop his style. An avid paddler and wilderness nut, it’s natural that most of Dwayne’s paintings should reflect this passion.
After spending close to a decade as a technical writer at a large multi-national computer company, Dwayne opted to look at their Jan 2009 decision to downsize him as an opportunity to become a stay@home Dad for his newborn twins, and pursue his painting and writing whenever the boys allow him to do so.
It is a decision that continues to make him giggle with wild abandon to this very day.