Still

This commission was done for my Aunt this last winter. After we had gone over some options together for the landscape we arrived in the snowy winter plain. She had seen my previous piece, A Walk on Mount Seymour and the snowy foot prints brought her back to early memories walking home from her mother’s piano lessons in the cold winter nights outside of Red deer, Alberta. She had found the place.

  I had visited my grandparents farm often growing up but I had not been out walking in the evening winters. Without an exact picture capturing the setting, I had to envision the familiar landscape blanketed in white and in a way that was true to feeling of my Aunts Story. A healthy challenge but one I was up for.

Piecing the landscape together, the painting revealed itself to me one sitting at a time. Sitting and looking, sitting and looking. Seeing where the light and shadows, colours and forms on the snowy plain were to lay. A lesson in perspective and a sharpening of the eye. When the last little bit of snow was placed and there was nothing left to add, the landscape spoke for itself.

Given our distance I sent over the reveal via email . She was thrilled with the results! I am truly grateful to be able to recreate this tender moment for my aunt and to have been able to connect with the peace and stillness out on the Albertan prairies through my paints.