arts scene
ART OF OUR AREA THREE ARTISTS WHOSE DEPICTIONS OF BEAUTIFUL B.C. WILL INSPIRE YOU TO EXPLORE
STORY BY MEGAN L ALO ND E
ABOVE: "AUGUST MOON OVERLORD" BY BRENT LYNCH, FROM MOUNTAIN GALLERIES AT THE FAIRMONT, DEPICTS THE OVERLORD GLACIER.
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s a kid growing up in southwest British Columbia, Mother Nature drew Brent Lynch to Whistler long before the allure of honing his raw creativity at art school won out. “For a long time, Whistler was a real playground for me. It was back in the ’60s and ’70s—I date myself now—but there wasn't much up there, and we were hard-core,” he recalls. “We skied, big time.” But even when education and career became priorities, the call of the mountains remained constant. “When I went to art school, I didn’t really sign up to stay indoors all my life,” he says, over the phone from his Vancouver Island studio. Among other gigs, Lynch worked as a graphic designer for Blackcomb Mountain back in its early days, creating promotional content—including the
famed fighter-jet posters for the Saudan Couloir Ski Race Extreme—before pivoting to focus on his own artwork. Today, his impressionismmeets-realism paintings hang at Mountain Galleries in the Fairmont Chateau Whistler. As an en plein air painter, an artist who paints “in the open air,” Lynch relies on his field sketches, memory, imagination and his familiarity with the local landscape to successfully depict recognizable landmarks through his brush strokes. Some spots lie on the valley floor—Lost Lake, for instance— while others rest a few thousand feet closer to the atmosphere, from Black Tusk and Panorama Ridge to the imposing Overlord Glacier. (Many of the same spots that now draw countless tourists through Instagram geotags.) Experiencing a location and capturing that memory on canvas can sometimes offer a different >>
WHISTLER MAGAZINE SUMMER/FALL 2021
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