Birds X Neil MacCormick

These tees are a collaboration between Birds of North America, and artist Neil MacCormick (link). Neil has painted full time since 1984 and co-owns Birds of North America with his partner, designer Hayley Gibson. The two have shared a studio since meeting in 2006.

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In early 2025, I went through Neil’s entire oeuvre and chose a half dozen pieces that I thought would make amazing T-shirts. I ended up unconsciously gravitating towards his paintings from the West Coast of Canada, my place of origin, done between 1993- 2002.

Neil moved out west in 1989, after growing up in Toronto, and found that certain types of things stood out to him. ‘Victoria had a really different feeling to me - in a way I was just trying to identify what exactly that feeling was. Part of it was that the culture was so different, like the trailers and campers that dotted the streets. Part of it was the time capsule feeling of things that had disappeared in Toronto before I left - old storefronts and signs especially. It was like everything I was interested in was still there - as if the era I grew up in was still represented in Victoria.’  

I feel like the images Neil took during this time, when he was still new to the city, captured something elusive, intangible and pure about the West Coast. They somehow succeed at distilling everything important about 80’s and 90’s West Coast Canadian communities to me. I find that this particular selection of his work also captures the beautiful heartache feeling of eternal childhood summers. I hope you can feel it too.

~ Hayley