David Clayton Drum’s Northern Lights over Atlin Lake (2015) captures a breathtaking moment of colour and atmosphere as the aurora borealis shimmers above the serene waters of Atlin Lake. 

David Clayton Drum (born 1944 in Moncton, New Brunswick) discovered his passion for painting at an early age with encouragement from his father, who built him a studio and taught him to use oils when he was just ten years old. By age 17, he had won the Canadian National Exhibition mural competition, setting a foundation for a career that would span decades and styles. Growing up in Toronto, he honed his skills under influential teachers and through summers spent painting landscapes, which helped shape his lifelong engagement with light, sky, and place.

Drum’s artistic path was distinctive: an unexpected detour into anatomy and medical illustration led to a lengthy career as a medical illustrator while he continued to paint in his own time. He later spent years in New York City, where he developed abstract expressionist works and immersed himself in the vibrant artistic scene. Grants from the Canada Council and the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts supported this early work. Upon returning to Toronto in 1986, he established a studio and gallery, studied impressionistic techniques influenced by Monet, and broadened his approach to landscape painting.

In later years, Drum lived and worked from his home-gallery-studio in Crystal Beach, Ontario, and continued to record the natural beauty of Canadian and northern landscapes. His work has been exhibited widely and is included in public and corporate collections such as the Niagara Parks Commission and the Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College. Drum described painting as a form of meditation and spiritual practice — a belief that resonates strongly in works like Northern Lights over Atlin Lake, where sky and land converge in a vivid expression of light and memory.