By Beth Stewart.
This is the tenth in an ongoing series in which The Beat Magazine 2025 takes readers “Behind The Scenes” to meet the talented creative individuals who make the London area such a vibrant arts and culture community.
In this segment, Beth Stewart profiles former London Visual Artist Jill Price.
(Pictured: Jill Price, Studio 8, Barrie, Ontario. Photo by Frances Thomas.)
While former Londoner Jill Price is proficient in multiple mediums, over the past four to five years, her practice has become more process than outcome-based.
She is increasingly interested in the history and agency of materials and has come to realize how the visual arts may perpetuate the environmental harms that have preoccupied her work since 2010.
She gained understanding of the material excess and waste of the global fine art market through her research into the global fast-fashion industry while earning her MFA at OCADU. She recalls, “I was able to make connections between the two industries as well as became more informed about the proliferation of international art fairs, biennales, mass-produced art paraphernalia and the abundance of waste produced just in mounting one season of exhibitions at a large institution.”
As a result, Price seeks to “disrupt” Anthropocentric (the belief that human beings are the most important entities in the universe) perspectives.
This shift has led her to incorporate methods of unmaking and reconfiguring into her practice: she unmakes and reconfigures items that she has found, acquired, or created in the past into something new. This allows Price to put into action her concern for the planet, to repurpose materials that would otherwise contribute to Earth’s ecocide and to, hopefully, inspire others to work in more eco-ethical ways.
The list of individuals and institutions who have inspired or helped Price along the way is endless. Fortunate to have had rich educational experiences at Western, OCADU, Queens, and even during high school, she notes how she has been blessed with involvement in vibrant arts communities such as London, Barrie, Midland and Kingston, Ontario, which have led to many important friendships, mentors and business partners that have been instrumental in her professional and creative growth as an arts administrator, writer, educator, practitioner and more importantly a human.
(Pictured: Jill Price, “Undoing Geography, 2026”, reconfigured paintings on canvas, pegboard, wood panels, reclaimed coloured Ikea shelves and rotating motors, various sizes. Photo courtesy of the artist.)
Price’s installation of soft sculptures, titled “Undoing Geography”, is currently on display as part of the 2026 Kellogg’s Art Competition (https://100kellogglane.com/events/art-comp-2026). Composed of deconstructed and reconfigured landscape paintings, the piece speaks to how landscapes are always in a state of flux and how everyone experiences an environment differently.
Beyond this, Price has a new body of meditative drawings emerging on top of reclaimed drop cloths and is maintaining two other long-standing projects.
(Pictured: Jill Price, “We Are Forest, 2026”, reclaimed books, natural pigments, cardboard, poplar dowels, brass chains, wood desk, wood stool, handmade seed paper and window vinyl, various sizes. Photo courtesy of the artist.)
One is “We Are Forest”, an installation at West Gwillimbury Library, Bradford, Ontario that invites visitors to sit in the space below an assemblage of hand-dyed and hand-cut leaves constructed from old books that were slated for landfill and write a letter on hand-made seed paper on behalf of trees. Some of the letters have been planted in the library’s outdoor garden, meaning Price’s installation will long outlive the temporary exhibition of hanging paper branches.
(Pictured: Jill Price, I’ve Been Here Before”, installation shot at the Art Gallery of Mississauga. Photo by Toni Hafkenscheid.)
The other ongoing body of work is Price’s “I’ve Been Here Before”. Recently exhibited at the Art Gallery of Mississauga, it is comprised of museological displays of detritus garnered from regional beach cleans. As she continues to orchestrate shoreline cleanups at home and abroad, Price’s goal is to travel the installation, titled “Wht-trSH”, to different cultural centres around Lake Ontario. Learn more about this project at: https://www.artgalleryofmississauga.com/events/ive-been-here-before-cathie-jamieson-and-jill-price/
For more on Jill Price, visit http://www.jillpricestudios.ca, @jillpricestudios, or at UN/making Network Eventbrite to participate in beach cleans. People interested in how Price integrates beach cleaning walks into her drawing practice are welcome to follow her explorations on Instagram: @drawingaswalking. Cutlines:
By Beth Stewart.
Beth Stewart is a writer, educator, and visual artist. She has a B.A. and a B.Ed. from the University of Windsor and a Diploma in Art Therapy from Western University. Beth has worked as an Art Therapist with Canadian war veterans and as a Secondary School Teacher of art and English for the TVDSB. She retired in 2024.
Beth was the arts editor at Scene Magazine from 2004 to 2006. She founded Artscape Magazine in 2006 and served as its editor until 2008. In addition, Beth wrote on the arts for Lifestyle Magazine from 2006 to 2017 and served as the copy editor for The Beat Magazine (in print) from 2009 to 2013.
As a visual artist, Beth works mainly in dry media and favours coloured pencil. Over the past decade, Beth’s focus has been on wild and domestic birds. Beth is a member of the Coloured Pencil Society of America, the Gallery Painting Group, the Eclectic Collage Collective, the Lambeth Art Association, and a founding member of the Coloured Pencil Artists of Canada group.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100009620916363
The Beat Magazine 2025 