The residency, awarded by the Arts Council for Northern Ireland, was for ten weeks at the Banff Centre in the Canadian Rockies. The studio was set back in the woods, and on arrival, the temperature was 30 below zero and it was blowing a blizzard. My intention had been to paint winter skies and mountains, but I could see neither. Focusing on what I could see, the trees became the core of my work. The scale was such that individual trees lost their definition and I sought to capture the movement of the forest.
While painting, I became aware of an unexplainable presence, both in my surroundings and subsequently on the canvas panels. Perhaps a comment made by a member of the First Nations community at the opening of my exhibition in Banff provided most enlightenment - "you have captured the spirit of the forest in the paintings, the soul of our people are in those trees." |
