Spirit Island

For years I carried a quiet certainty that nothing in North America could stand beside the Swiss Alps. The Canadian Rockies took that from me in a single afternoon. We spent part of 2025 in Banff and Jasper, and I kept stopping mid-step, undone by water the color of turquoise glass and mountains that looked set down by hand.

Spirit Island was the one that undid me completely. A small stand of pines rests alone in Maligne Lake, mirrored so cleanly in the still water that the whole scene looks invented, pulled straight from a painter’s imagination. That it exists at all feels like a kindness.

We spent our days wandering the shorelines and climbing into the mountains, and I carried the place home with me. I finished this painting a couple of months later, still trying to hold that water in my head.