When asked what he wants most of all from life, Bill McLuckie answers "I just want to be able to paint", and for fifty-odd years he has done just that. He has been painting actively since the age of twelve. Bill is unpretentious to a fault, He started a small studio gallery in the West Point Grey area of Vancouver, BC, in the mid-sixties, on a busy street, far from anything resembling an art district. He never expanded and the only sign announcing his activity was a script across the front window saying "Studio Gallery". Bill McLuckie, a third generation Vancouverite, has always lived in the West Point Grey area. In his early teens he became involved in art classes at, and outside of high school, in the form of outdoor drawing and painting classes with such Vancouver artists as Ron Thom and Don Jarvis, and at evening and weekend classes at the Vancouver School of Art. He sold two oil paintings at the ripe old age of 16.

Bill attended the Banff School of Fine Arts, under the tutelage of J.W.G.(Jock) MacDonald, who was himself mentored by, and taught alongside Fred Varley, a member of the Canadian "Group of Seven" painters. Jock was a teacher at the Ontario College of Art (OCA) at this time. Jock MacDonald encouraged Bill to come and do the four year OCA program, but although Bill was eager to do so, his father insisted he attend the University of BC instead. While there, he continued evening painting classes with such Vancouver artists as John Koerner and Joe Plaskett. Later he returned to the Banff School of Fine Arts, where he took a class with Harry Wolforth of the University of Alberta.

In the early sixties Bill spent fifteen months in Paris, during which time he attended the Ecole des Beaux Arts, made many trips to the Louvre, and other museums, spent time drawing, painting, looking at art in commercial galleries, and in general soaking up the culture of the "City of Light".

Bill believes that these experiences helped to develop a dedicated eye, but that he remains largely self-taught. He paints in a style he considers his own, a style that is primarily representational, but that contains elements of the impressionistic. Bill has participated in many juried shows and in private exhibitions, but he has exhibited for the most part at his studio, from which he has sold some 1,000 paintings in the last thirty-five years.

Bill considers watercolour his main passion, but works in all medias. He finds photography an important adjunct for detailed work, and still goes out with the camera despite having accumulated many prints. He has a particular passion for dramatic lighting, and in pursuit of this he prefers to photograph in the latter part of the afternoon, when the angled light can create more dramatic effects.

Bill has a keen sense of the transient nature of our surroundings, and the fragility of our planet. He feels a need to preserve some record of "the landscape of our time, which may be disappearing before our eyes", and in so doing, he continues to make a conscious effort to make each new painting better than the last.