This went through a lot of sketches and revisions. The original idea I had noted down in 2018 was a small close up painting of a family of spirit bears, inspired by the BBC documentary “Ghost Bear Family”. I kept returning to the idea over the years and eventually realized that while spirit bears are fascinating it was the breathtaking North American forests shown in the documentary that I wanted to paint. I have never been there and I would not dare to paint in great detail a landscape I haven’t seen first hand, but I know the feeling of walking into majestic Alpine forests, and I know the feelings of worry for exploitation and loss of wildlife that can’t really be separated from the deep enjoyment of a landscape in this day and age. The documentary title also evoked the folk notion of haunted forests, so I wanted the picture to evoke that too, but only to subvert the notion and suggest that it’s actually us humans who “haunt” forests with the trail of destruction and bizarre artifacts we leave behind.
So there was a lot I wanted to synthesize, and I naturally found myself employing a synthetic style akin to that of Japanese woodblock prints and working on an unusually large canvas for me. The result is one of my all time favourites among my works.
The original thumbnail idea and the later initial sketch:
