Assiniboine

In my landscape work, I seek to capture the way a place made me feel. I do this by playing with the texture of impasto acrylic and the orientation of my brushstrokes. I use a limited colour palette in my pieces mixing various hues to explore “light” and the ways it can elicit an emotional response but also create a mood in the work itself.

In “Assiniboine” I experiment with the question of "what if?" As I stood looking at this towering mountain in the dark, I remember wondering, "What if the moonlight was so bright it illuminated the forest? What would the mountain look like in that moment?"

We can see the result of playing with light in night photography, where long exposure often illuminates the details of an entire landscape, so much so that the photo looks as if it was taken during the day. Letting this principle guide my original sketches of this moment, I used this piece as an exploration into the idea of light to bring the forest and the mountain's colour to life even in the darkness. The mountain and the trees seem to be welcoming versus ominous as they would be under the typical dark sky.