What do you think of when someone says, "Let's go to the mountains." You might remember a trip you took with your family when you were younger, a weekend fling with a partner, or a raucous summer with friends. Perhaps, if you're like me, you remember multiple events, including the first time you laid eyes on them.
For most of us, they are objects we admire from a distance. For a few, they are a playground of adventure (and danger!). For all of us, as I recently discovered, they are fixtures both physical and emotional.
As I'm sure you remember, wildfires swept through Jasper, Alberta earlier this year, decimating 30% of the town and forcing the evacuation of thousands of people. I was honoured to be able to provide the Canadian Red Cross with $35,000 from the print sales of my Pyramid Mountain print, which you made possible.
This coming together altered the way I think of the world I paint. As an artist who mostly paints landscapes, I know the natural world is important to most of us, but I still underestimated how much emotion we invest in the land.
The mountains are not just pieces of earth, they're not even just natural wonders, they're our memories, our friends, our families—our home, whether we have a physical address there or not.
With this collection, Icons, I strayed away from the way I usually capture mountains. Instead of showcasing them in the distance, untouchable, surrounded by the forests and fields that rise up along their base, I'm moving my artist's eye closer. Each piece in the Icon collection features a different peak, up close and personal, touchable, cast against a single-tone sky of brilliant colour to ensure there is nothing to compete with their majesty.
I approached each rocky composition in the same way a portrait artist might paint a face. I wanted to capture not just their exterior, their crests and edges acting as the wrinkles of age and experience, but also their personality and the energy they embody. I used light-reflecting gold and copper accents to capture the optimism of giants, as well as went through dozens of options for background colours until I found the one that felt just right.
Like all of us, each mountain has a history. Unlike us, though, their life story includes all of us, from all over the world. In my pursuit to bring a bit of humanity to the mountains we all know, it helped me understand that the natural world isn't outside of us, it is us. When we embrace it as we would our family, our friends, and our homes, it makes me want to do better in preserving them and the communities that share their space.
The mountains selected to appear in this collection are:
- Cascade Mountain (48x36)
- Castle Mountain (48x36)
- Ha Ling Peak (30x40)
- Howes Peak (36x48)
- Mount Assiniboine (36x48)
- Mount Edith Cavell (48x36)
- Mount Robson (48x36)
- Mount Rundle (48x36)
- Mount Temple (36x48)
- Pyramid Mountain (36x60)
- Roche Miette (40x30)
- Three Sisters Triptych (30x40)
The collection will be available to newsletter subscribers at 10AM MST November 14, before being released to the general public at 12PM MST.
As always, you can be the first to get your hands on a piece by signing up to my newsletter. I'm so excited to share this collection with you.
Comment
I live close to the mountains and go visit them as often as I can. I call them ´Gods Cathedrals. They speak to you if you know how to listen. Spirits live with the mountains and their beauty.