The Provinces and Territories | Canada Project

I’ve had an idea brewing for a while now, about a Canada painting project. The idea solidified when I saw this image floating around the internet:

This photo blew my mind about Canada. I instantly wanted to hop in the car and drive as fast as possible to Twillingate, Newfoundland Labrador. Of course, this was not possible so instead I contacted Doreen Dalley and asked permission to paint from her photo. I want to capture the majesty of this incredible iceberg, and Canadian Landscape.

That was how the project was born: what else do I not know about this country? What have I not seen, that others have (that I might want to!)? So I put out an invitation for people to send me their favourite photos from around the country. Funny enough the territory I thought would be hardest, was my first respond: Nunavut! I still need images from the Northwest Territories though, if anyone has some to share?

I have done enough traveling out west, and around Ontario, to have collected a huge amount of photos. However, I really want this project to not be about my travels: but instead to be about people around the country coming together in a collective project. Each painting, will give the photographer credit, and they also have the option of adding a small story (even just a sentence or two) with photo.

The photos I have collected above are: Northwest Territories (Jennifer Poole), Nunavut (Jennifer Shymko), Prince Edward Island (Carrie Freake), New Brunskwick (Emily Smith), Nova Scotia (Laura Sanders), Albert (Maggie May), and British Columbia (Robyn Cowan). Notice no Mountains? I’m pushing outside my comfort zone haha.

I choose the pictures based on the feelings that come to me, and the flow I see in the ability to paint them (how they compliment my style of painting). So many people have sent me INCREDIBLE images, and I am so grateful. Keep them coming, you just never know what might hit me!

The two photos above are mine, driving through Manitoba and Saskatchewan on October 31st last year. What a grey, boring drive! But something about these two images, I really love. I am not too eager to use my own photos (so if you have a Manitoba image or Sask image you’d like to share, send it my way); I will use these if nothing else has jumped at me over the next few weeks.

In conclusion, I am still looking for a few photos: Quebec, Ontario and the Northwest Territories. Please do not be shy, send as many as you like, I am happy to sort through images.

Ontario has been the hardest for me, perhaps because I have seen so much of it, and this province of mine is so large and has such a vast diversity in it’s land. I have a ton of images from Ontario, and people have sent so many gorgeous photos, that have come close to the “ah ha!” but not quite the flow I need… and it’s made me think: what do I want to capture about Ontario? …Wild flowers! If anyone has an image, of a field of wild flowers (yellows, oranges, purples, blues, greens, etc.), with open skies above, and maybe some tree silhouettes… please forward them to me. I will be so grateful. Of course, you are welcome to send me anything, I am open to changing my mind if something else clicks.

In the meantime… I’m going to start some practice paintings on small canvas boards, and I am super pumped to start with those bold colours in Maggie’s Alberta Sunset. Stay tuned… I will keep writing about the process of this project over the next few months. I hope to have it complete (13 canvases all the same -medium- size) by December. One painting a week? I can handle that. I think.