Ever since Darlene received her BFA (painting) from the Alberta College of Art and Design in 2000, she has been painting full time and maintaining a studio in Calgary. She finds renewal and inspiration in the mountains and rivers of the area.
Darlene’s love of nature began during her early childhood in Lynn Valley, North Vancouver, and her love deepened in the mystery of the temperate rainforests and the coastal grandeur of British Columbia. Her love became an irrepressible desire to express the beauty she perceived and felt. Many years of experimentation in the creative arts followed, culminating in landscape painting.
Her journey is an ever-evolving enquiry influenced by Eastern religion and philosophy. She is the observer of nature’s shore from the oceanic presence of her deepest being. The resulting paintings—built up from texture, impasto, and thin glazes of oil—create intimations of a serene and timeless world.
In 2017 she attended a “cold wax” workshop at the Ballinglen Arts Centre in the tiny village of Ballycastle on the north coast of County Mayo, Ireland. Cold wax is a mixture of clarified beeswax with added chemicals to maintain a paste-like consistency. It is used as a medium with oil paint and is generally applied with brayers and squeegees. It lends itself nicely to building layers of varying thickness, opaque or transparent, which can then be selectively dissolved, scraped or drawn upon. The resulting surface is complex and rich in colour, line and texture, perfect for expressing feelings, intuitions and metaphors grounded in nature and excellent for taking her landscape painting further into the realm of the abstract.
Her paintings are held in private and corporate collections in Canada, the United States, Australia, Hong Kong and other countries.
She writes, “My paintings are born at the confluence of three rivers: love of nature, love of painting and the spirit that is my heart.”
