Painting the north: Peaceful quiet of northern Manitoba forest inspires The Pas painter
When Michael O'Toole was a young boy growing up in New Brunswick, he knew he always wanted to paint. Little did he know he'd end up becoming a well-known name painting the sights of northern Manitoba for the world to see.
Michael O'Toole always wanted to be a painter. Now he has murals all over northern Manitoba
Michael O'Toole came to The Pas in 1980 and fell in love with the town and nearby boreal forest. (Gary Solilak/CBC)
Social Sharing
When Michael O'Toole was a young boy growing up in New Brunswick, he knew he always wanted to paint. Little did he know he'd end up becoming a well-known name painting the sights of northern Manitoba for the world to see.
"If you go nice and slow and take your time, there's always something," said O'Toole, sitting in the basement of his home in The Pas, Man., where he does most of his painting these days. "You sit down ... and after 20 minutes or so things will start to come."
Michael O'Toole does most of his painting in his basement. He gets his inspiration by walking in the boreal forest of northern Manitoba. (Gary Solilak/CBC)
O'Toole first moved to the northern Manitoba town in 1980 from Northern Ontario with his wife and young family to work at the town's paper. He fell in love with the town and has lived there ever since, retiring from the mill in the early 2000s.
"When I first came here, the guy that hired me took me out to the Valley in the fall. There was just thousands and thousands of ducks, ducks and geese," he said. "That's what I like."
Animals like foxes, ducks and geese and moose are O'Toole's specialty. All of his inspiration for his paintings comes from near The Pas in the boreal forest.
Painting the sites of northern Manitoba
7 years ago
Duration 1:46
Michael O'Toole always wanted to be a painter. Now he has murals all over northern Manitoba.
"It's important to me to be out in the wilderness, that's for sure," he said. "I like the quietness of it. The smell of it too. The smell of the forest when you're walking though it."
O'Toole said he simply photographs different birds and animals for inspiration. Then, in his basement workshop, he puts imagination to canvas, dreaming up backgrounds, skylines and other elements. He self-taught himself to paint.
"A few hours a day ... till you're happy with it, or fed up till you don't like it any more," he said, adding that it can take 20 to 30 hours to complete one painting. "I'm always on two or three at a time."
Michael O'Toole has painted murals in many communities in northern Manitoba, including this one in The Pas, which took nearly 2 months to complete. (Gary Solilak/CBC)
O'Toole said he used to wake up early and spend a few hours before work painting in his basement. Now that he's retired, he's got more time.
His paintings hang in buildings in The Pas and across the north, and Ducks Unlimited has taken prints for fundraisers, but some of his projects are much bigger than others, literally.
His most recent was a 30-metre-long, two-metre-high mural near the train station in The Pas.
"That was my biggest one so far," he said of the mural, which is comprised of 25 different panels, which were painted five at a time over the course of two months.
O'Toole's pieces can be seen in buildings around The Pas. He prefers to paint animals, but has also painted boats and other objects. (Gary Solilak/CBC)
"That took me quite a while," he said. The mural shows a scene of polar bears and the ocean on one end, slowly transitioning to a forest scene with geese and other animals at the other.
He's painted other, smaller mural for communities like Herb Lake Landing and Cranberry Portage in northern Manitoba, to name a couple.
As for what's next, O'Toole isn't sure. But he plans to stay close by and keep painting the north as long as he can.
"It's a good place to live," he said. "You get to know a lot of people. All my family is here."
Manitoba forest inspires The Pas painter
7 years ago
Duration 1:25
Michael O'Toole has been painting animals and scenery of the north since he moved to The Pas in 1980. His prints have made their way across the province, and several communities in the north have large murals he's painted.
