Chasing Mountains To Better Paint Them
Emily Beaudoin is a watercolor, pen, and ink artist from Canada. She talked to us about her love for nature and her hopes to inspire people to be environmental stewards.
“I’ve spent my life chasing mountains. Going to school, or working jobs that let me be in them” reflects Emily, talking about the mix of her two passions, mountains, and art.
Living in British Columbia, Canada, Emily Beaudoin is a watercolor, pen, and ink artist.
Coming from a very artistic, and scientific, family, she’s always been encouraged towards a mix of biology, art, and outdoor adventures.
The physical challenge of the mountains as part of the artistic process
“Being cold, and tired and being blistered and hungry is all part of the process, and I think it helps me create the paintings that really have the emotion of a place”
As an artist, she finds her inspiration in the mountains. “They just enthrall me, I feel very driven to capture them as I experience them. For me going out into the backcountry, being cold, and tired and being blistered and hungry is all part of the process, and I think it helps me create the paintings that really have the emotion of a place”.
So, when she goes on a hike, she brings all of her material. A very small watercolor palette, fitting into her backpack. Special brushes that have caps, as to not damage the top in transportation. And the water she finds up there, in the streams, or melting snow. “It's a very portable way of doing art” she smiles.
“When I’m painting, I feel like I’m in a flow state, and I don’t realize that I have to go to the bathroom or that I’m hungry or that I’m cold. And then once I stop, it all comes crashing down. My ideal world is to stay out there and paint and paint until it’s done. But sometimes it’s not possible, because of time or weather, so I’ll bring it back to my studio and finish it here”.
The path to get there
Emily has been going up the mountains to paint for a long time. Already at uni, she switched program because her indoor one was making her feel claustrophobic. But the outdoor one wasn’t feeling up her creativity needs. “That’s when I started taking paint out into nature, and combining my two loves because nothing makes me happier than being outside and painting” she smiles.
Before Covid, she was working part-time as a guide as well. But since no tourism is happening right now, Emily’s been a full-time artist since April.
“Your inner critic is always screaming at you and telling you you’re going to fail or comparing yourself to other people”
“I didn’t think it was a good time to do that, but people have been super supportive and excited about it. I think it was the push that I needed. I could have got another job, but I was kind of at the point where I was so busy with art and my side job, that I figured, I should just give it a shot. It was the little nudge that I needed to fully kick me into it” she grins.
She says that the biggest obstacle she had to overcome was self-doubt. “Your inner critic is always screaming at you and telling you you’re going to fail or comparing yourself to other people” she points out. She’s been learning to embrace it, a little bit, and to take some good advice from it. But you also need, at certain times, “to keep it quiet and just move forward”.
“I’m harder on myself than anyone else is on me, so it’s kind of like a battle with myself. But my family and friends are very supportive, and my boyfriend is an amazing wonderful support, and he lets me bounce my crazy ideas off him all the time. I’m very lucky, to have such a support group” she explains, grateful.
From drawing to murals to teaching in nature
Emily doesn’t want to stop there. She has a lot of projects and ideas for the future, and she wants to keep on learning and improving.
The first obsession: murals. “It’s the thing I’m most excited about right now. It’s a whole new realm” she says, excitingly. She’s already done some indoor ones, with ladders, but is aiming at a big giant one, to be able to learn all the different techniques coming with it. She apprenticed at the last Cagliari mural festival with the artist Ankh One. “It was wild. He was like, here’s your can of spray paint, this is your half of the wall, go. The dream is to, next year, do my own mural at that festival and hopefully many others” she explains.
On top of that, Emily also has a kind of passion project that she’s slowly getting off the ground. “Women’s backcountry art workshops”. She dreams about 4 or 5 days long retreats, in a hut or a cabin, “to eat amazing food, cook together, share stories, learn how to paint, and hike together. Teaching people to push themselves in the outdoor, and then creativity, it’s a pretty magical combination”.
She links this idea with the importance she gives to environmentalism. She has vision, and she has hopes.“For me, if I go hike somewhere and work to get there and then to paint it, I’m very connected to that place, or animal or tree. If more people could connect to nature and creativity, we would have a lot easier time convincing people to be stewards of the environment”.
