A collection of some of local artist Anne Burchill's latest works is now on display until Aug. 15 at the Mountain View Museum and Archives in Olds.
Burchill estimates there are 23 pieces in the show, almost all of which are from work she's done over the past couple of years. However, one or two, like one of a Grenada resident working with onions, date back much further than that.
The exhibition contains everything from scenes of nature near Olds and up in the Yukon to a stunning portrait of a wary gorilla she encountered in Rwanda last October.
The collection features watercolours and pastels.
"I like watercolours; watercolours are my main medium. I like the transparency, I like the colour and then I like pastels for texture," Burchill says.
She says there's an overarching theme to the show: the effect of light and water.
"I was reflecting in my mind those two important things we can't live without -- light or water. And I wanted some people in it," she says.
"This is kind of connected; I mean, (if) it's wintertime and you've got the light on the snow, (if it's springtime) you've got the dew on the flowers, you've got water supplied for washing onions, you've got the northern lights and how we relate to everything."
She also decided to include at least one picture from her visit to Africa last fall.
"Again, they can't survive without light or water and have to adapt to it," she says.
She encountered the gorilla in a Rwanda rainforest last October.
"They come to you; they just come like this, and lay in front and look up," she says, adding the gorilla was eight to 10 feet away from her.
"All his family were there playing. So I kind of made a portrait of him," she says.
However, because he was looking down at the time, "I kind of made up the position of the head."
Burchill was struck by the gorilla's massive shoulders.
"You sort of stand there, don't know what to do," she says. "What do I do here," she asked herself. "Just stand still," she decided.
One of the paintings in the collection depicts part of the Red Deer River in March.
"You ski down by the Red Deer River and you've got the shadows, they were so beautiful, just amazing," she says.
"A lot of these are from the North. The colours are different; quite vibrant," she says. "I like the way, when I kayak, the light and the sun goes right in the lake. The rocks, they sparkle and they look abstract."
Other paintings depict a beaver dam and a beaver lodge.
The collection also includes a collage.
A friend showed Burchill how to make collages. She likes the challenge of adding various textures.
"It's like a jigsaw puzzle; you kind of keep putting it on," she says.
