Why Mountains?

Majesty Reflected 30x40 acrylics on canvas 2015

Why paint mountains? The simple answer is that I am surrounded by them and they have always been a part of my existence. I was born in Jasper Alberta, right in the heart of the Canadian Rockies, and now live just to the west in between the Rockies and the Cariboo Mountains. A short distance is Mount Robson, the highest peak in the Canadian Rockies. When I travel to the Kootenays I go down the parkway between Jasper and Banff. Yet more incredible vistas. How could I not paint mountains? Mountains are, for me, quite a challenge to paint.

Despite the difficuliteis, I keep coming back to painting mountains. Part of it is the desire to capture a moment. Landscape painting, at its heart, is the desire to capture a feeling we had when we encountered a scene. There is something about what we saw that day that made us say, “I must paint this”. But, however, we frequently fail in our attempts to capture that “something”, so we paint it again, and again.

An example is Mt Robson. Anyone who has driven east toward Jasper can recall the first time they saw the mountain on a clear day. It dominates the view. I have, so far, been unable to reproduce in the many paintings of it the scale and impact it has. But I keep trying.