The story of the Winter Sun Series

My husband and I got married under a tree, packed all our combined stuff into my parents’ old Volvo station wagon, and drove north for my forestry job. We were both too young to rent a car. When I showed up to pick up the company truck in my brand new boots and wedding ring, the man behind the counter asked if I was even old enough to have a driver’s license.

I remember that first road trip as a married couple, driving through northern Alberta and watching all the leafless aspen trees out the window. There were so, so many unknowns ahead for us - we didn’t know when we first met that twenty years later, we would be parents of three children, that I would be a cancer survivor, that we would both be on the other side of huge career changes, living in another country.  I certainly didn’t imagine that I would be a full time artist, running a business and having so many people follow my work - I still can’t.  But he saw that potential in me even then, and convinced me to leave my old career and follow it.

We’ve been together now more than half our lives, through all these iterations of change.  Many older and wiser people have helped us along the way, and I have no idea where we’ll be twenty years from now. I was reflecting on young love and that drive north while I made this series - that feeling of newness and promise.  Twenty years in, this series represents change for me too; bringing all my techniques together, and building on everything that’s behind us now. 

As many of you know, I stamp an aspen leaf onto the back of each painting to honor the idea of community, growth and my roots as a forester.  I’m proud to release my first dedicated series on my favorite tree species, the Winter Sun series.