Category Archives: badlands

Barn @ Echodale

I spent a beautiful morning painting on the hillside above the buildings at Echodale this summer.  What a lovely old white barn, of the style built around here about 100 years ago.  There are still quite a few of these around the countryside, but not many are as well-preserved as this one.  The spectacular setting of the S. Saskatchewan River valley doesn’t hurt either.

If you’d like to own this original watercolour, email Gena with your bid today! gena03@telusplanet.net Minimum bid $100 (plus gst and shipping). First bid, or highest bid wins the painting.

Evening Comes Stealing

My favourite place to walk is a loop around the horse pasture, along the S. Saskatchewan River.  The evening was stealing in when I walked the other night; the coulees drawing the purple, green and blue shadows up over their knees like you or I would a quilt. The warm last rays of sun tipped everything orange, and even the shadows borrow an edge of that magic light, while the sagebrush goes defiantly turquoise…an exact compliment of the orange.   I don’t often wish I was an oil painter, but today I craved brilliant oil paint colours in order to fully express that glow.

If you’d like to own this original watercolour, email Gena with your bid today! gena03@telusplanet.net Minimum bid $100 (plus gst and shipping). First bid, or highest bid wins the painting.

Sandstone & Sunshine

This is the scene of our camp at Writing-On-Stone. I know! It seems surreal, right?… with the towering walls of rock and the Who ville-like tops of the Sweetgrass Hills peeping over rugged coulees. A sacred place to the plains tribes, there really is a sense of mystery and magic here.  I’m so grateful we  recognise and preserve extraordinary places like this.

If you’d like to own this original watercolour, email Gena with your bid today! gena03@telusplanet.net Minimum bid $100 (plus gst and shipping). First bid, or highest bid wins the painting.

Sweetgrass and the Milk

This was painted on the ridge overlooking the campground at Writing-On-Stone Provincial Park. These distinctive hills string themselves in lumps and bumps all along “The Medicine Line” (the American border) like chunks of lapis on a chain.  When the flat plain they rest on plunges into the hoodoos and sandstone of the Milk River’s basin, you have the stuff of legend.
 There have been a lot of legends created in this wild landscape, but that’s for another day.  

If you’d like to own this original watercolour, email Gena with your bid today! gena03@telusplanet.net Minimum bid $100 (plus gst and shipping). First bid, or highest bid wins the painting.

Down On the Milk

 There’s some trail riding being done down on the Milk River at Writing-On-Stone Provincial Park this weekend.  I go every year at this time and have such a great time there, camping and being with horses and friends.  For Canada Day, I choose to celebrate by hugging a hoodoo…..what did YOU do?

If you’ve never explored this part of the province, go! There are many treasures to be found…..there are more petroglyphs found here than anywhere else in North America, and no wonder with all those fabulous rock walls to carve on!
I did a scratchy little painting there today and will share it with you tomorrow….it’s too late tonight to get a decent photo of it.
Happy Canada Day to all!

Rim Lit Coulees

This little painting is from that perfect time of evening at the perfect time of year, when the light is slanted and golden, the trees are bathed in their fall foliage and the air is fragrant with fall. Since it’s spring right now, I’m doubly aware of how vastly different and magic in their own way, each of our seasons are.   

If you’d like to own this original watercolour, email Gena with your bid today! gena03@telusplanet.net Minimum bid $100 (plus gst and shipping). First bid, or highest bid wins the painting.

Sundown @ Five Bends

Today’s project is a commission for a friend; the S. Saskatchewan River as it winds southeast towards Medicine Hat.  From the top of this hill, you can see 5 bends on the river, and the Cypress Hills, blue on the horizon.  As always, first I had to have a really good drawing.  The river breaks are complicated and if I try and paint them without knowing where the paint should go, I always wind up in a real mess. 
This is one of my favourite places to paint, and at sunset it is truly magic.

Cottonwoods in October

It’s all about that beautiful river again…the river I’ve lived most of my life near.  I like to walk here, south of Redcliff, in a loop around the pasture where Polly (my horse) lives. Every fall, this particular magic takes place, and though we’re into dull old grey and brown November now, this is what it was like just a couple of short weeks ago.  These huge old cottonwoods seem to radiate their own light, and the shadows of the riverbanks are the perfect backdrop.

If you’d like to own this original watercolour, email Gena with your bid today! gena03@telusplanet.net Minimum bid $100 (plus gst and shipping). First bid, or highest bid wins the painting.

Lazy River

This lazy October river shows no resemblance to the raging muddy torrent that we often see in the spring, or the icebound ribbon it is in winter.  Like everything else here, this beautiful river has it’s seasons. I particularly love it in the fall, when it clears up and the turquoise of it’s mountain sources returns to glint against the gold and red of the fall grass and foliage. 

If you’d like to own this original watercolour, email Gena with your bid today! gena03@telusplanet.net Minimum bid $100 (plus gst and shipping). First bid, or highest bid wins the painting.

Barn @ The Pinhorn

This lovely old barn is situated down on the Milk River in the far southern edge of the province. The Pinhorn is the name of a grazing reserve, and the headquarters are located in a deep and rugged  part of that beautiful little river’s basin.  This country is still wild and remote, full of all kinds of natural dangers. The young cowboys who work here are hardy and resourceful, reminding  me of some of the rugged individuals I knew as a child, my own parents included. It’s like a “reality check” from the world we now inhabit. SOLD

If you’d like to own this original watercolour, email Gena with your bid today! gena03@telusplanet.net Minimum bid $100 (plus gst and shipping). First bid, or highest bid wins the painting.