Landscape painting possibilities can “ambush” me anywhere: from the roadside, from my backyard, and particularly from the wilderness canoe or kayak trips that my husband and I take every year.

In my youth, I painted the landscape because it was beautiful and it was a way to be outside with that beauty for hours on end, with a “good excuse”. There have always been shapes and contours that struck a chord in me that I would try to capture; it was nature’s “language” and I would work at the interpretation of that language.

Now I paint landscapes for reasons that sound dramatic or trite but are real and true at the deepest of levels. We are not defined by our homes, cities, jobs, possessions. These are without life. We are defined by, and “grow” in, living environments: we come to be ourselves through other people and are part of a vast network of living things. When we see ourselves in relation to the things we own or our job titles, we diminish and distort our purpose and being. When we see ourselves as a part of the greater living landscape, we come to awe, humility, and an understanding of our place as stewards, not owners or consumers and lose our sense of clock-time.

When I paint the landscape now, it is an act of love, need and mystery. As I immerse my senses in what is before me, a relationship grows between us. As I paint in that relationship, I become myself. When you, the viewer, look at the painting, you see the landscape…and you see who I am.

October in the Valley of Ten Peaks [Buy / View] Trumpet Lily Dance [Buy / View]	Mount Robson Revealed [Buy / View] And Mother Said Welcome Home [Buy / View]	Spring Snow [Buy / View]	Dreaming Driftwood [Buy / View]