Witnessing the Middle Distance

Edmonton artist Karen Bishop has been travelling to Jasper National Park to paint for over 20 years. It has been her refuge; where she can breathe deeply and find peace. But 2025 was different. After the devastating wildfires burned through the valley, facing the damage would be inescapable.   

Painting en-plein-air requires the artist to sit and look carefully at the landscape, to exist with it for as long as it takes for the artwork to come to life. Painting the burnt landscape, Karen sat with the loss, the changes. Painting in Jasper was an act of bearing witness, being present with grief, looking at the land as it is now.  

And what Karen saw was the landscape as she has never experienced it before. Stripped back, missing the dark green of the forest, she saw the movement of the landscape itself, the geology of the mountains and valleys. A middle distance filled with shape and movement, dimension and topography that she had never known before.  

Karen is Witnessing the Middle Distance, a landscape that she has visited hundreds of times, but one that she now knows more completely because of the fire.   

Karen Bishop, Pyramid Mountain from Highway 93A, 2025. Watercolour on yupo, 19x12”; Karen Bishop, Burnt Tree at Whistler Campground, 2025. Watercolour on yupo with salvaged charcoal; Karen Bishop, Whistlers campground looking towards Mount Tekarra, 2025. Watercolour on yupo with salvaged charcoal; Portrait of Karen Bishop by Gil Klotz.