Don Jean-Louis

Don (Donald) Jean-Louis was born in Hull, Quebec, but grew up in Ottawa. A largely self-taught artist, his first solo show was at The Isaacs Gallery in Toronto in 1961. His experience working in the television news graphics department at the CBC led him to devise one of the first interactive works in Canada, shown at The Isaacs Gallery in 1969, titled "The Nature of the Media is to Expose," followed by another media work titled "All the N.E.W.S." in 1980. Jean-Louis' work in the 1970s and 1980s utilized neon and a personal vision for photography but he continued to paint and draw. He was awarded public art commissions for a Government of Canada building in North York, Toronto, 1976 (neon and sail cloth), CIL House, North York in the mid-1980s (integrated neon), and a hanging sculpture based on maple keys for the atrium of the Canadian Embassy in Beijing, in 1990.