I love to paint and I love being outdoors — and plein air satisfies both passions. Painting a scene live, in the open air, is exhilarating. I am often in a swoon as I watch a sky with racing clouds, patterns of colour and the dramatic play of light and shadow in a pond or on a field of grain. Painting the landscape of Tiny Township and Georgian Bay has become an obsession — and capturing the essence of what has moved me is the challenge I set for myself.”

Plein air painting

As long as I can hold onto a brush I paint outdoors, but our Canadian climate inevitably chases me into my fabulous studio which looks out over Georgian Bay. It’s here that I’ll take a plein air study that has really struck me and use it as reference to create a larger painting that attempts to enhance the feeling of light, color and energy captured in the original.”

My fabulous studio

When the winter seems particularly bleak on Georgian Bay, I retreat to San Miguel de Allende in the central highlands of Mexico, where I study spanish and create very different paintings from those I do at home. The stunning patterns created by the brilliant southern sun have taught me a lot about colour, light and shadow — lessons which now inform all the paintings I do.”

Outdoors in San Miguel de Allende