Artist Biography

In her atmospheric and sweeping images of nature, Annette Sicotte combines traveling observations of much loved locations with memories and dreams to create personalized and thus distorted imagery of the western landscape. The effect of the elements, the weather and the seasons seem to transform the still picture into a moving scene on canvas. With subdued colours and soft edged forms the work feels somewhat romantic but upon a closer look, the intuitive palette knife layers and loose brushwork make it feel entirely contemporary. Born and raised in Alberta, Annette has fished, hiked, camped and skied the backcountry of the Canadian Rockies and spent countless hours driving and photographing areas throughout western Canada. Annette paints to share the sensation of being outdoors in the wilderness or to simply quiet the urban experience in favour of a serene connection to nature.

"I paint the natural world around me in an effort to acknowledge the small things in life that make up ʻthe big pictureʼ. I choose to paint ever present subjects and experiences that are often considered unremarkable and use tools and techniques that do not allow precise or overly predictable markings. My current work combines various materials such as wax, ink, charcoal, pastel, resin and acrylic paint on canvas or birch in various ways to create rich, multi-layered abstracted images of nature.”