Back in Alaska, the first month
A week painting outdoors
During my first week back in Alaska, I camped overlooking Tazlina Glacier and spent my days painting. I kept finding different viewpoints toward the same valley, but even from one spot the landscape never seemed to be the same twice.
Rain moved through the valley, fog drifted between the mountains, and the glacier disappeared behind clouds before coming back into view. Sunlight would cross the landscape and twenty minutes later the whole color relationship had changed. One morning I woke up to rain and wondered whether it was time to move on. Instead, I sat in the back of my truck with my coffee and waited. The ceiling began lifting and slowly the mountains came back. My little observation station gave me plenty of reasons to stay.
As a pilot, I love watching mountain weather develop across miles of terrain: where visibility opens, where clouds hang against the ridges, where the rain is moving. As a painter, I’m watching those same changes affect value, color, edges and atmosphere.
I wanted to understand how a forest of a million spruce trees could read as one value mass, how colors change with distance, and how to capture the gesture of those trees without describing every branch. I found myself simplifying more and more. In some studies I left the underpainting showing because I liked the spontaneous, unfinished quality.
Painting landscapes outdoors is an adjustment from painting wolves in the studio, and I’m enjoying the challenge. I love being outside and I love painting. Here I get to do both, in Alaska.
These small studies are helping me understand the northern atmosphere I want to bring into my larger work. Everything I learn out here will find its way into those paintings.
Researching the world of northern dogs
After that week outdoors, I visited the Iditarod headquarters in Wasilla as part of my research into sled dogs, their history, and their place in life across Alaska and the North.
At the local public library, I found some wonderful books with spectacular historical photographs. Teams, kennels, freight dogs, camps, equipment, and the people whose lives depended on these animals. The more I look, the more interested I become in the whole world around the dogs: their working lives, their companionship with people, and their presence in northern homes and communities.
As part of my research, I’ve also been introduced to more resources, including the VILDA, Alaska’s Digital Archives, an online collection of historical photographs and other materials from libraries, museums and archives across the state. It gives me another way to explore the history of working dogs and northern life.
Recently I visited Jon Van Zyle at his home, the Alaskan artist whose work has illustrated Iditarod posters for fifty years. It’s been wonderful connecting with people who know this world so well while I develop my own ideas.
Wolves & Northern dogs : a shared fascination
My interest in northern dogs grows naturally from my longstanding fascination with wolves. Wolves embody what fascinates me about the wild: freedom, mystery, and lives unfolding beyond our view. In northern dogs, that wilderness feels unexpectedly close. Their anatomy, the structure of their bodies, their movement and their thick coats reveal a physical kinship with wolves. Their gaze strengthens that connection, giving even a familiar animal a presence that evokes the wild.
Yet their close partnership with people introduces another dimension: companionship, shared work and the life they share in the North. I’m drawn to both that connection with wolves and the individuality and relationships within a group. There is more here than a portrait of a dog. There is an entire world to explore, where animal relationships, human history and the demands of northern life meet.
And the ideas keep moving in both directions. Studying groups of sled dogs brought me back to wolf books, where I found an arrangement of four wolves that I wanted to sketch. Then, looking through a sled dog book afterward, my attention went straight to dogs lying together in a similar arrangement. Suddenly I wanted to sketch dogs again!
One feeds the other, pulling at my imagination in both directions. I’m exploring composition, rhythm, gesture and the relationships within a group. Whether I’m studying wolves or northern dogs, ideas for both keep developing. There is so much I want to explore through my art.
“Into The Wilderness“
In the last Studio Journal, I shared the story behind Into the Wilderness, my submission for the Yukon Quest poster contest. The painting wasn’t selected, and I’m now offering the original to my collectors here first.
Into The Wilderness
Oil on linen - 12 x 16 inches - $4,500
If you’re interested in the original, please contact me for details.
The painting also has its own signed and numbered limited-edition fine art print, available on my website.
Follow my journey on YouTube
I’ve published my first YouTube video, sharing the journey from my early days in Alaska to becoming a painter and pilot, and the inspiration that brought me back North. It introduces the world I want to explore through my art: wolves, northern dogs, bush planes and life in remote places. I wanted to live inside the world that inspires my work, and this channel will let you follow along.
Thank you for following my work. i’m excited to share the drawings, paintings and discoveries that come from living here in the North.
Virginie
