Day #3 Road Trip

 The Space Between Here & Now / triptych 24" x 96" /acrylic

This painting looked so great on Nancy & Larry's wall that I didn't want to take it down this morning. However, it's back in the van and on its way to Saskatchewan where I originally saw this captivating small white building out in the golden wheat fields.

 After a delicious sunrise breakfast in the sun room, I packed up the van and hit the road again. I drove out of Timmins and headed West on 101 to Wawa, a very remote and winding road. I am constantly being warned about moose on the highway, I haven't seen any live ones yet only the unlucky ones being transported home by hunters on top of their pick-ups. Most of the 3 hour drive to Wawa I was completely alone on the highway.

 

When the sun came out from behind a cloud, it nearly took my breath away as I came round a corner and it lit up one of the dozens of lakes that I drove by.

 The rock cuts along side the highway are spectacular. Veins of color shoot through them in varying sizes and degrees of sparkle. There was a long stretch of pink rocks (granite?)

 White Lake seemed to be catching clouds today. I am collecting images every mile of the way and already have an entire new body of work incubating within.

 Climbing and descending the shores of Lake Superior. Here I was not so alone on the highway, there were a LOT of big trucks traveling this road.

This enormous body of water feels so alive as it interacts with the clouds, sky and light.

I came upon the cliffs of Red Rock in the late afternoon sunlight. Unfortunately there was no safe place to stop and photograph the VERY red rock but these give a bit of an idea of what they were like.

 Long drive today, I arrived exhausted and hungry at my little B&B on the shore of Lake Superior just outside of Thunder Bay. The owner sent me to a local diner where I wolfed down supper and came back to share a glass of wine with the two kayakers from Iowa who are also staying here and exploring the lake by kayak. Tomorrow the journey continues. A few leads on galleries to check out in Thunder Bay and then on to Winnipeg.

Day #2 on the Road

 A leisurely drive from Val d'Or to Timmins today. Crossed the Atlantic Watershed just outside of Rouyn Noranda. I didn't realize how much mining goes on up here. I saw some incredibly large trucks and machinery as well as more than a few huge open mines, copper and gold mostly. The towns are few and far between but seem to be booming and bustling.

Mid afternoon I arrived in Timmins where I was greeted most graciously by Larry Malo and his wife, Nancy Woods. They are both physicians here in Timmins and had purchased several of my paintings while visiting Tremblant. I called them up out of the blue and they offered to host a "pop up gallery" in their historic B&B The McIntyre Lodge 

 Nancy & Larry

 

The McIntyre Lodge

 A gorgeously preserved building surrounded by 14 acres of forest and gardens. We placed the paintings throughout the house and set up a wine and cheese evening for their friends.
It was a very fun evening, I met some wonderful people from Timmins and sold a few large pieces so now my load has lightened as I continue Westward.

 

 These incredibly gracious hosts have given me the world's coziest cabin to sleep in for tonight and so I am writing this beside a roaring fire as I get ready to crawl under the covers.
Tomorrow morning will come quickly and tomorrow I have my longest drive of the whole trip, 10.5 hours to Thunder Bay.

 

Heading North Day #1 of Cross Canada Art Caravan

Left Montreal and headed North today. Slowly the road opened up, the worries fell away and the roar of the wilderness started to express itself in yellows and golds. Wishing I had the time to stop and paint some of this beauty but have taken photos to amplify the memory later. What a glorious palette and a clear light I was gifted with today. Val d'Or is a bustling little city in the middle of nowhere, a good place for supper and sleep.

 

Cross Canada Art Caravan

an uncommon & adventurous traveling art exhibition...

I have driven across Canada many times over the years, by van, on the back of a motorcycle, on my own motorcyle, by yellow camero (contracted by a car dealer) by various other vehicles and finally by train. I haven't done it in a long time and so when a friend of mine said she needed her van driven out West I couldn't resist. My daughter, whom I haven't seen in almost a year lives out there and this was the clincher for me.

The trip has expanded. At first I thought I would bring a few paintings out west & explore the western art galleries. In the meantime I started to have requests from people along the route to see my work and so the road trip has become a series of one day/evening "pop up galleries" along the way.

If you are reading this and are interested in having me stop by your town for either a private viewing of the work or hosting a pop up exhibition please contact me for details.

Here is a link to my itinerary and online gallery of the paintings that will be accompanying me.

As the project grew so did my passion for the trip. I love the diverse landscape of Canada, the boreal forests, the lakes, mountains, prairies, rivers. I have entered the Arabella Canadian Landscape Contest..."which is looking to create a collection of contemporary works that examine the emotional power of landscape art in shaping a new vision for Canada". I am honored and inspired to be amongst this group of dynamic and visionary landscape painters.

I won't have time to paint along the way this time but I will be taking photos, making sketches and absorbing the depth and breadth of the landscape. I will do my best to make regular entries on this blog as I travel.

On reading Thomas Berry's "The Dream of the Earth" I came across this passage that expressed my deep love for the wilderness and it's threatened destruction.

"We should be clear about what happens when we destroy the living forms of this planet. The first consequence is that we destroy modes of divine presence.  If we have a wonderful sense of the divine, it is because we live amid such awesome magnificence. If we have refinement of emotion and sensitivity, it is because of the delicacy, the fragrance, the indescribable beauty of song and music and rhythmic movement in the world about us."

It is a ferocious love of these multidimensional expressions of the earth that I paint from, for and with.

As the physicist, Brain Swimme tells us, "The universe shivers with wonder in the depths of the human. From the tiniest fragment of matter to the grand sweep of the galactic systems, we have a new clarity through our empirical modes of knowing. We experience an identity with the entire cosmic order within our own beings."

And so I begin my cross country caravan, to share my own inner wilderness as expressed through paint. In turn I hope I will hear this interior wildness speak through others as we remember our capacity for the awesome, the sacred qualities of each bio region and to give gratitude for the numinous quality of every earthly reality.

Recently I have become a signature member of Artists for Conservation and in keeping with their philosophy a percentage of all sales along the road will be donated to the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society

The Roaring Silence

The Roaring Silence / acrylic / 30" x 24"

This painting is just finished and comes from the memories of a real place in Parc Mont-Tremblant with an imaginal flourish in textures, colors and shapes. The joy of discovery is in every single brushstroke and one thing leads to another, like a thousand
tiny decisions, until they all start to fit together and sing in unison.

Studio Glimpse

 A glimpse into 5 artists studios, one of them is mine!

http://hyperallergic.com/49365/a-view-from-the-easel-part-10/

True North

True North, 30" x 24" , acrylic and spirals

"The visible can thus fill me and occupy me because I who see it do not see it from the depths of nothingness, but from the midst of itself; I the seer am also visible. What makes the weight, the thickness, the flesh of each color, of each sound, of each tactile texture, of the present, and of the world is the fact that he who grasps them feels himself emerge from them by a sort of coiling up or redoubling, fundamentally homogenous with them; he feels that he is the sensible itself coming to itself... "

~Merleau-Ponty "The Visible and the Invisible"