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Bill Franks began his painting journey as a boy, rowing famed Group of Seven artist A.Y. Jackson, around the Go-Home Bay area of Georgian Bay. Deeply influenced by Jackson, he learned to see the land through a painter’s eye — discovering colour, light, and movement in every horizon. Jackson taught him how to build his own sketch box and introduced him to the fundamentals of painting en plein air, lessons that would anchor a lifelong devotion to capturing the Canadian landscape.

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Over the decades, Franks’ painting experience has taken him from one coast of Canada to the other, along with five remarkable sketching expeditions to the High Arctic. His paintings hang in private collections across Canada and internationally, celebrated for their authenticity and connection to place.

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This year, Bill generously donated a painting to an art auction I organized for the Escarpment Corridor Alliance in Collingwood. When I visited his downtown studio to pick it up, I was struck by the depth of his creativity — walls covered in decades of sketches, and canvases, brushes worn from use, and paint tubes so well-loved I couldn't make out what colour was in each tube. Listening to him share stories about each piece and the landscapes that inspired them was captivating. His collection of “sketches” spans many decades, each one a glimpse into Canada’s wild beauty and his enduring relationship with it.

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Bill still paints daily, never from photographs, but always from his hundreds of oil studies created en plein air. His 10 × 12 oil sketches available below were hand picked by myself, and are windows into that lifelong dialogue between artist and land — honest, textured, and profoundly Canadian.​​

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I'm in awe of these paintings, and am excited to share them with you.

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