Lake Okanagan

The Rocky Mountains will always have a place in my heart. Growing up, drives through the Alberta and Montana Rockies were a fixture of my childhood; sometimes stressful (driving to Kalispell in the winter comes to mind), but mostly nothing short of awe-inspiring.

My brother lives in Kelowna with his family, and he took this photo from his deck overlooking Lake Okanagan. The mountains here aren't technically the Rockies (they're part of the Columbia Mountain System, if we're being precise) but I tend to refer to them as such anyway. Precision has its limits.

I like this piece for a couple of reasons. One, Carey Price lives in Kelowna, and I'm fairly certain that if I lived there too, he and I would be best buds. Two, this painting looks almost nothing like the reference photo my brother took. I cropped in, tweaked the colours, and somehow ended up with a scene that doesn't resemble my edit, let alone his original photo.

And I like that. It's very much my own interpretation of a place I have yet to visit, but already have a vivid and specific picture of in my mind. Sometimes getting lost from the reference is exactly how you find the painting.