An emotional response to the Cariboo landscape inspired the June exhibit in the upstairs of the Station House Gallery in Williams Lake.
Prince Rupert artist Lynn Cociani said she created the paintings based on what she saw while driving through the region taking her daughter, now 21, to and from music school in the Lower Mainland.
"Often you connect to a place more strongly when you are heightened emotionally," she said during the show's opening Thursday, June 6, noting her paintings are all of places in the Cariboo she took pictures of when she "was really feeling stuff."
Describing herself as one of those parents who doesn't want her children to leave home ever, she said she had a difficult time with the separation.
Even though she had driven through the Cariboo several times before, the landscape took on more vibrancy and nuance because she was more devastated, she explained.
Initially she created a painting of Chasm, near 100 Mile House, and then applied to the Station House Gallery to have her art in one of the 2024 exhibits.
Once she was accepted she spent a year creating the other pieces.
"When you look at my show you look at it and think it's a show about landscapes, but really what it is about is how we connect to the spaces we inhabit and how different spaces can take on different meaning when we travel through them at different times of our lives," she told guests during the artist talk segment of the evening.
"I was snapping pictures, as I always do, which is always annoying to my family. They think we are never going to get there," " she added, chuckling.
She also began to notice things about the Cariboo she had not noticed before and stopped in more places.
"I started paying attention like I had not before. When I look at Signal Point from Scout Island, for example, and think of when my friend took me and my kids there when they were little it meant one thing. But my kids are grown up and now I am there by myself and it's a different experience."
Viewers experience landscapes and paintings differently, she added.
"For you my show might be about your own personal stuff. For me it's about my daughter."
Cociani graduated in fine arts from Okanagan College in 1985. She worked as an airbrush artist, sign painter and custom framer, before moving to Prince Rupert where she pursued being an artist full-time.
Her art has been shown at Two Rivers Gallery in Prince George, Island Mountain Arts in Wells, Smithers Art Gallery, Terrace Art Gallery and the Ruth Harvey Gallery at the Museum of Northern B.C. in Prince Rupert.
As a member of the Prince Rupert Community Arts Council, she helped with the creation and administration of the Artist in Residence program, is a founding member of the Fantastic 5 Artist Collective and the Northern Artist Adventure Group Collective.
Her show Heart of the Matter will remain at the Station House Gallery until Saturday, June 29.
