Jim Breukelman was born in Trinidad in 1941. Before moving to Canada he lived with his family in Bogotá, Columbia; New York, NY; White Plains, NY; and Geneva, Switzerland. He earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts at the Rhode Island School of Design, where he majored in photography under Harry Callahan and minored in graphic design under Malcolm Greer and Dieter Roth.
In 1967, he was hired by the Vancouver School of Art (now Emily Carr University of Art + Design) to plan and implement a diploma program in fine art photography. Under Breukelman's guidance, the new program developed into a four-year degree program that was one of the first in Canada to incorporate both traditional and cross-disciplinary practices. From 1967 to 2000, in his various roles as photography instructor, department head of photography, and dean of media arts, Breukelman had a significant influence on the development of photographic art and artists in Vancouver, while also continuing his own artistic practice.
Since leaving ECUAD in 2000, he has concentrated full time on developing his ideas and themes in photography and exhibiting his work, which has been shown at numerous galleries throughout Vancouver as well as across Canada and the United States (please see curriculum vitae). He is represented by Republic Gallery in Vancouver.
In the summer of 2012, Breukelman's Hot Properties photographs were included in the National Gallery of Canada exhibition Flora and Fauna: 400 Years of Artists Inspired by Nature, curated by Ann Thomas and currently touring Canada. This series, which was acquired by the National Gallery for its collection, was also included in their Builders: Canadian Biennial 2012, and one image from the series was selected for Canada Post's inaugural suite of stamps (1 5-year program) celebrating the history of Canadian photography (2013). The NGC has also acquired work from Breukelman's Mesocosm series.
Also in 2013, Breukelman produced an outdoor billboard work for Vancouver's City Centre metro station—a five-part piece entitled Fish Ladder: Salmon in the Capilano that was commissioned by the City of Vancouver's Public Art Program. "In spite of the knowledge base we have amassed about salmon, there are still important aspects of their life that remain unknown. For me, that is the beauty of wildness and wilderness—its potential for surprise and conjecture."
A word about Jim Breukelman's technical expertise: As founder, department head and long-time instructor in photography, he became something of a technical wizard in black-and-white and colour photographic processes, and has maintained a personal state-of-the-art studio for the production of his work. Unlike most photographers, he has expertly printed his own colour images.
The future holds the promise of many new works. In addition to those mentioned in the Nominator's statement, Breukelman is planning a collaborative project with artist/sculptor Rick Ross, for an exhibition in 2015, that will be "a photographic record and an abstraction" of the densely filled studio/workshop space where Ross produces his work, alongside drawings and sculptures by Ross. Breukelman also intends to begin work on a new project about topiary and wildness, inspired in part by his concept for a massive mural portraying a utopian garden.