“I AM AN AMATEUR IN THE TRUEST SENSE OF THE WORD”
Jaidah-Leigh Wyatt (she/her/elle) is a Canadian-Jamaican multimedia artist, working primarily in film, video games and animation. A writer first and foremost, over the years she’s come to enjoy bringing her words to life through various mediums, including film, photography, interactive and audio based projects. Above all else, she adores the weird, uncanny, macabre, anything horror-related (specifically psychological horror) and the absurd. Her artistic interests continue to spiral with every project - making her art today somewhat unconventional, practically veering into experimental territory. She is inspired by independent artists like Vewn (Victoria Vincent), Jack Stauber, Don Hertzfeldt and surrealist artists everywhere.
As an artist, she aims to find ideas and concepts that haven't been explored. She chases the myth of originality and strives to create works that make people think while exploring the hidden complexities in the mundane. Her work is intended to put a mirror in front of her audience, and inspire them to learn something about themselves and the things around them. The most important thing however, is for her to always stay creative, never be confined to the boundaries of any particular medium, and become a well-rounded artist. Whether it be plotting, scheming, or doodling, you can always find her working on something (or so she says).
Oftentimes, Wyatt describes herself as not only someone still in the process of learning how to create, but as an amateur. The word ‘amateur’ originally comes from France and roughly translates to ‘one who loves’. An amateur is someone who loves something, but does not pursue it professionally. Someone who simply pursues their interests for the sake of their pure enjoyment of it. As the years went by, amateur began to collaquially mean someone who is bad at their work, which may be true of someone who casually takes on a hobby, but this greatly takes away from the word’s romantic origins. To engage in a task without hopes of perfecting it, monetary gain or fame from it is to do something authentically - quality be damned- and this best describes why Wyatt makes art. Her work is directionless, but in a very clearly organized way. Once her stories begin, there’s no telling where they’ll end up. They’re designed to invite further investigation into their meaning and creation.
Although still in the early stages of her career, Wyatt boasts an array of professional mentorship and development opportunities, including (but not limited to) joining the inaugral cohort of POV Film’s Writing for TV program (2025), being a part of several programs with OYA media group, including the Year 6 Emerging Filmmakers cohort (2023-24), becoming an ArtWorksTO Participant (2023), having her short film What We Could Have displayed as part of DesignTO’s Youth Blueprint Exhibition (2023), being mentored on a commercial film set by director Miles Jay with Smuggler Productions (2022) and an 11 month animation mentorship with Black Girl Film School (2021) - in addition to the various student films she’s worked on over the years and more. Thus far, she was named a top performer of BGFS Film Foundations I in 2021, was the director of the interactive film Binary which won second place at York University’s inaugural game jam in 2022 and won an award for her audio piece, A Glimpse of Me, with CJRU at Toronto Metropolitan University in 2023. One of her most recent achievements was being selected as one of 30 applicants for the 2025 BIPOC Writers Connect with the Writers Union of Canada, where she continued working on her novel writing pursuits.
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