“A Veil of Stillness: A Collection Inspired by the Changing Season”
As autumn settles across Vancouver Island, the air takes on that familiar softness — the kind that carries the scent of cedar, salt, and rain. The mornings arrive in mist and hush, and the evenings stretch out under skies painted in plum and rose. It’s in this quiet shift between fall and winter that I found the heartbeat of my newest collection.
Having a few commissioned paintings pop unexpectedly into my schedule, I fell behind in creating my fall collection. A welcomed delay. I was delighted to work with the loveliest of patrons to create profoundly meaningful and deeply personal paintings for them—something I cherish. I am humbled by the invitation to tell their story through a painting. The outcome becomes an heirloom to pass down to their children, how beautiful! What a honour.
Being behind schedule is not really a thing when you are an entrepreneur artist but I will be out of country for the last part of the year, so I have a reduced amount of time to create this year. Setting forward to create this collection, I committed to pausing all of life’s distractions and gave myself a week in the studio. I was hoping to create 3-4 smallish pieces in this time. Generally, I am a slow painter. I like to plan, pause, reflect, layer and repeat. But something happened when I stepped into my studio. Having removed all other responsibilities and having pure focus on my process, I found a flow. Ideas poured out of me. Technical roadblocks dissolved. The outcome: a collection of seven paintings I am thrilled with. I feel this is my best work to-date. It has range. Technical range, artist range. It has meaning and mood. And it tells of my intimate experience of this season on this land.
This work is my love letter to the land I call home — the Salish Sea, the rainforest, the rugged coastlines, and the mountains layered one behind another like a dream fading into fog. These paintings are moments I’ve experienced while walking the forest trails or standing at the water’s edge watching light move across the surface. They’re a reflection of how the landscape feels, not just how it looks.
In these pieces, fog drapes through treetops like lace, revealing the subtle shape of ridgelines. Forests rise steeply, their trunks tall and slender, light filtering through the canopy like stained glass. Along the shoreline, jagged rocks glow with the warmth of the setting sun, and the horizons that glimmer only appears when the light hits just right. The palette is all the colours of fall — warm rusts and ochres, muted greens, buttery yellows, and deep, comforting plums.
Each painting in this collection carries a sense of stillness — a soft blanket wrapping around the land as it transitions from one season to the next. It’s the quiet that falls when you pause long enough to really listen.
But more than anything, this collection is about connection — the emotional bond so many of us feel to this landscape. My collectors often tell me that a painting reminds them of the places they love: an early morning paddle through the mist, a hike up a ridge overlooking the islands, a quiet sunset shared with someone dear. These memories live in the brushstrokes — in the layers of color and texture that bring the landscape to life.
An original painting has a way of holding those moments. It can commemorate a memory, anchor a sense of place, and become part of the stories we pass down. Art has that quiet power — to remind us of where we’ve been, to reflect how we feel, and to connect us to what truly matters.
I paint to offer that connection — to create pieces that carry the calm and beauty of the coast into your home, where they can continue to speak to you through the seasons.
This collection is an invitation to pause, to breathe, and to remember the feeling of standing on the edge of the sea, wrapped in quiet. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did creating it.