The Art at Bow Lake

Terri Kelly Moyers

Medium: oil on board
Size: 12 x 10 inches
Price: $3,100 framed

When visitors arrive at Bow Lake, their first instinct is to move to the lakeshore and breathe in the vista of lake, mountain, and glacier, as we see in this lyrical work. Keen observation of fall colour and shortening daylight pervades this work, and the lake shows choppy water, so common in the fall when the seasons change. It is a classic view of the lake, enjoyed by the thousands who pass on the highway, and cherished by those who stop longer at Bow Lake.

Note: Autumn Leaves is being sold in an exclusive frame made for this work by Jarvis Hall. 

John Moyers

Medium: oil on board
Size: 12 × 12 inches
Price: $2,800 framed

This close-up view of Crowfoot Glacier pays attention to the play of light and shadow on the surface of the mountain and the glacial ice. Furrowed and cracked, dripping with melt, and devoid of greenery, this work speaks of climbing and views from across the valley on hikes to verdant meadows and distant passes. John Moyer’s observation of the mountain’s face is impressionistic, and the blues and whites of the glacier contrast coldly with the greys and blues of the limestone, dolostone, and shale.

Terri Kelly Moyers

Medium: oil on board
Size: 9 × 12 inches
Price: $2,500 framed

Crowfoot Glacier from across the valley is depicted here under a scant dusting of snow. Unsettled weather peeks over the glacier’s crest, but the evergreens have absorbed the melt, telling us it is warming in the valley. An appealing and classic depiction of a well-known landmark, Fresh Snow is an essay in the blues and greys of the Canadian Rockies.

John Moyers

Medium: oil on board
Size: 12 × 12 inches
Price: $2,800 framed

John Moyers has used a trick of the brush and board here to scrubbily capture the effect of on-and-off rain in the mountains. Using less linseed or other oil paint emulsifier, he has applied drier paint with a drier brush to capture the feeling of fleeting, and then returning rain. The bands of changing colour on the lake’s surface also indicate rain or wind, and provide a rich colour contrast to the mountain and forest.

John Moyers

Medium: oil on board
Size: 12 × 132 inches
Price: $2,800 framed

Bright fall colour and blue-bird skies are cherished days in the mountains of Canada. Fall is often the finest time of the year, when the meadows turn crisp and golden, and the forest smells ripe. From a seated vantage point in the meadow, we are looking up at the brightly lit glacier through a screen of forest. Inviting and warm, fall offers the most varied palette for a painter of the Canadian Rockies and is a favoured time of year for both John and Terri Kelly Moyers.

John Moyers

Medium: oil on board
Size: 12 × 12 inches
Price: $2,800 framed

In Ice and Rock, we are looking head-on at Snow Dome Glacier in the Columbia Icefields. Painting en plein air, as the Moyers do, subjects the artists to all the wild and unpredictable and varied temperament of mountain weather. We can see all of that in this vibrant work: roiling cloud, sunlit snow, wind or possibly rain, and sunlight reflecting off rocks.

John Moyers

Medium: oil on board
Size: 12 × 12 inches
Price: $2,800 framed

As noted in the title, this work is an unusual view of Crowfoot Glacier, set from closer to the peak and right of the typical highway viewpoint. This vantage point turns our focus to the moraine and upper toe of the glacier, where the colours of purple-brown tumbled rock, and the bright turquoise of the ice above are very finely handled.

Terri Kelly Moyers

Medium: oil on board
Size: 12 × 12 inches
Price: $2,800 framed

Plein air painters must pack all their gear for a hike, as well as all their painting materials, into the locations where they plan to work. Specially designed paint kits and panel boxes are required to safely transport freshly painted works in oil, which take days to cure and weeks to completely dry. This view of Snow Dome Glacier at the Columbia Icefields would have required that care. Set from high on one of the lateral moraines, we are well above the valley floor, gaining a perspective that barely peeks over the crest of the vast ice sheet, a view not visible from the highway below.

Terri Kelly Moyers

Medium: oil on board
Size: 24 × 12 inches
Price: $3,900 framed

South of Bow Lake and into Yoho National Park, Takakkaw Falls has drawn artists to its plumy cascade for over 100 years. This work is sensitively handled, reminiscent of the style of the Canadian Railway School of painters, and tackles the difficult subject of mist and crepuscular rays — the rainbows sunlight creates in waterfalls.

John Moyers

Medium: oil on board
Size: 12 × 12 inches
Price: $2,800 framed

A classic beauty spot in the Lake Louise area, Moraine Lake’s Wenkchemna Peaks have become famous worldwide. Here we see a view from near The Rockpile, easily accessible from the lakeshore trailhead. Moyers has captured the purple, green, and pinky brown of these Great Divide peaks beautifully, with assured brushwork and a lightness of hand. The dripping snow chutes are very finely handled, with delicate variations in the colour of the snow.

John Moyers

Medium: oil on board
Size: 12 × 12 inches
Price: $2,800 framed

Bright white ice and brilliant sunlight contrast with the title of this work, which tells us it was a cold day when John Moyers painted. It is easy to underestimate the challenge of painting mountainscapes out of doors; oil becomes less viscous in cold weather, fingers freeze, and rocks, often used as seats, chill through numerous layers of insulation. To complete a work, even a small one, in adverse conditions is a testament to the desire to capture the beauty of the scene.

Terri Kelly Moyers

Medium: oil on board
Size: 16 × 16 inches
Price: $3,900 framed

The tumbled nest of logs that gathers at the outlet of Moraine Lake forms a smart contrast to the verticality of the peaks beyond it. Dotted with colour, the tangle of driftwood creates a striking foreground, almost as if the logs had been jammed into the bottom third of the painting by the persistent push of the lake waters beyond.

Terri Kelly Moyers

Medium: oil on board
Size: 16 × 16 inches
Price: $3,900 framed

The winding gravel flats that form because the glacial rivers below large ice sheets are ever-changing. Constantly damming and undamming themselves, they often wash out trails and roads. The water in these flats is chalky and silt-filled, settling out to blue occasionally, only to be washed over and turned to chalk again, as melt from the glaciers increases or decreases. Moyers has handled this depiction of silty water beautifully, with liquid strokes and subtle colour variations.

John Moyers

Medium: oil on board
Size: 12 × 24 inches
Price: $3,900 framed

On the opposite side of the valley from the Columbia Icefields, we can access views such as this from the Wilcox Pass Trail, which gives hikers an ever-widening panorama of the region. Opportunities to get up high, as John Moyers has done to paint this lovely work, are short-lived when trails are clear, access is relatively easy, and the fireweed is in bloom. A larger format also demands better weather, when a two-foot panel in wet oil can be transported back to the valley floor without damage.

John Moyers

Medium: oil on board
Size: 12 × 24 inches
Price: $3,900 framed

This exceptional work is indeed a work of beauty, wherein ‘height of summer’ colours are used and the warmth of the day is felt when looking at the work. The lake is calm, the sky mostly cloudless, and the verdant, cool forest immensely appealing. The conifers in the near ground are lyrical and calligraphic, adding movement and richness to the work.

John Moyers

Medium: oil on board
Size: 12 × 12 inches
Price: $2,800 framed

This charming work takes us into the heart of The Lodge at Bow Lake’s grounds, near the Horse Corral. In this region, small streams meander and wind their way through meadows. In summer, these same meadows are rich with wildflowers, and in fall, as we see here, the colours of the meadows move into gold. In this inviting work, the stream leads our eye to the falls in the distance and beckons us to follow.

John Moyers

Medium: oil on board
Size: 12 × 12 inches
Price: $2,800 framed

A Tinge of Autumn contrasts the yellow of ripening leaves with the classic blues and grey-whites of the mountains in this region. Simply executed and interestingly composed, the space between the mountain in the distance and the branch in the near ground is broken up by lakeshore and sun sparkle. There is a variance in brushwork, too, with the branch and leaves more crisply delineated than the peak in the distance.

John Moyers

Medium: oil on board
Size: 12 × 12 inches
Price: $2,800 framed

Prevailing winds in the Canadian Rockies, combined with the snow that they blow in the winter, often leave their clear marks on trees. With one side stripped and stunted almost bare, the main tree in this work leans away from the wind, the chop on the water, and the defined edges of clouds, sheltering the younger tree behind it. Even the bedding planes of the mountain seem to lean away from the wind in this energetic work.

Terri Kelly Moyers

Medium: oil on board
Size: 12 × 10 inches
Price: $2,600 framed

Capturing  the  atmosphere  of  mountain  weather  is challenging. Here, Terri Kelly Moyers has mastered the moment when the air smells like snow and an otherwise fine day turns wintry, despite the yellow flowers blooming. Blue fades from the sky, and white takes over, as a bloom of spindrift or a peak-caught cloud hides the summit.

Terri Kelly Moyers

Medium: oil on board
Size: 12 × 12 inches
Price: $2,800 framed

Fine colour and consistent brushwork characterise this work, which looks up to Mount Athabasca from the meadow below. Now colonized by alpine plants and slow-growing lichens, the moraines are marks of glacial retreat. Weathered by the elements, they make a vertical backdrop for the encroaching meadows, which are cut by a stream dotted with ice pans.

Terri Kelly Moyers

Medium: oil on board
Size: 10 × 12 inches
Price: $2,600 framed

This small oil takes us up high in the tree-free zone, where the artist’s observable colour choices come solely from rock, snow or ice, and the sunlit sky. The brilliant blue of the sky here is tinged pink, and contrasts with the glacier, which reads first as white and then as a subtle combination of pink, yellow, blue, and white. Against the chalky scree slope, the glacier and sky appeal, beckoning us upwards.

Terri Kelly Moyers

Medium: oil on board
Size: 12 × 12 inches
Price: $2,800 framed

The Rock Pile at Moraine Lake is gradually being reforested as small plants take hold and soil fills cracks, plants die and break down, creating space for others to grow. In places such as this, we are reminded of the vastness of geological time and the shortness of the growing season in the Canadian Rockies. Summers are brief, and not always warm; winters are long, and snowpacks can be immense. For a small glade such as this to grow on the rock pile, plants make a Herculean effort to live out their lives.

Terri Kelly Moyers

Medium: oil on board
Size: 12 × 12 inches
Price: $2,800 framed

Mount Fay, seen in this square format work, is at the end of “the other trail” at Moraine Lake, and is often less busy in the height of summer. The closer you go to the mountain itself, the more the crowds dwindle, which is a fine reward for taking a longer hike. Moyers has used a lovely composition in this work, with a large pile of boulders in the near ground, and the mountain in the distance beyond a lush green slope.

John Moyers

Medium: oil on board
Size: 12 × 12 inches
Price: $2,800 framed

Chalky and effusive, this composition might capture freeze-up, when water turns to ice and creeps across the lake, closing it for the winter. Or when wind or sun turns the water a brilliant white, giving it such a glare that we are tempted to squint even when we know we are looking at a painting.

John Moyers

Medium: oil on board
Size: 12 × 12 inches
Price: $2,800 framed

Assured brushwork and a quick, observant approach are required to successfully paint en plein air. John and Terri Kelly Moyers have honed their skills in such settings over decades, and in this work, we can see John’s methods. Clear, well-defined line, a confident composition, no hesitancy in paint application, and a well-chosen, limited palette. These things, when added to a well-chosen scene from which to paint, give us fresh and lively works such as Headwaters of the Bow.

Terri Kelly Moyers

Medium: oil on board
Size: 9 × 12 inches
Price: $2,500 framed

Bright light and liquid brushwork instantly tell us this is a summer work by Terri Kelly Moyers. Sunlight breaks over the middle ridge in the work, which is accented by the colour of wildflowers and summer’s green growth. New spring green appears in the foreground forest too, and a feeling of warmth permeates the scene.

Terri Kelly Moyers

Medium: oil on board
Size: 10 × 12 inches
Price: $2,600 framed

Similar to her husband’s work, Headwaters of the Bow, Terri’s Glacial Melt was painted the same year, perhaps on the same day, in a very nearby location. Pairs of works like this, created by artists who have worked together for decades, give us an opportunity to compare their styles. Which work is similar to which is not really the question, as their unique and individual response to a setting can be seen in the way low bushes are handled, conifers are rendered, and in the personal style of mark-making of each painter.

Terri Kelly Moyers

Medium: oil on board
Size: 8 × 16 inches
Price: $2,800 framed

Terri Kelly Moyers has captured the way late spring snow lingers on the forest floor hollows and trail sides perfectly in this work. With snow clinging to the shaded side of trees and gullies, and the clouds breaking to allow the sun through, these are the days when winter resists letting go in the mountains.

John Moyers

Medium: oil on board
Size: 16 × 16 inches
Price: $3,900 framed

John Moyers’ close-in perspective on Crowfoot Glacier is indeed backlit, as the sun seems to emanate from the ice of the glacier herself, and the rock-face in front of it, nearest us and seen over the forest, is in shade. The ice and uppermost ridgeline are especially finely handled in this work, which is a slightly larger format for a John Moyers en plein air painting.

Terri Kelly Moyers

Medium: oil on board
Size: 8 × 16 inches
Price: $2,800 framed

A unique format has been used for this panoramic view of Snow Dome Glacier, which stretches from one side of the panel almost to the other. Flowing into the valley like whipped cream, the glacier is tinged with pink and blue licks of paint and seen over the hummocks of the lateral moraine. It is a spectacular high-up perspective from a viewpoint that only a minority of visitors to this iconic region of the Canadian Rockies will make the effort to see.