Beth Cowan

Region: 
North Slave
Community: 
Yellowknife
Primary Art Type: 

Artist Story

I reconnected with drawing when I moved to Yellowknife. When a friend gave me wood-burning tools, I started to transfer my drawings onto different types of wood. With that medium, I get to play with the natural components of my art, while highlighting the negative and positive spaces created through the burning of the wood.

The type of art that I do is very detail-oriented, which plays with aspects of nature really well. I get down to the really fine details of trees, plants and other natural elements. For me, it’s about looking at those parts of nature long enough to see all the interesting, weird, wonky bits. I then get to highlight and incorporate those interesting elements into my work.

When I started out, I used some discarded pieces of wood from the dump. Some of the pieces I found determined the kind of art I would create, depending on the grain, the placement of knots in the wood, or its interesting shapes. Since then, I started using pieces of wood that other people no longer needed. I now want to move towards working with wood from the area that I am working in. I particularly like to work with birch or spruce whenever I can find it.

My mother and grandmother are both artists. I grew up being able to play with all the materials that they used in their practice. When we went camping, we always had a field book that my mom would encourage us to journal in. I would draw the campsite we were in, and my mom would draw other parts of the road trip we were on. My passion for art only grew from there.

I am inspired by artists who try new and interesting techniques. I have been following the work of an artist in Toronto who makes ink from various foraged items. I thought it would be really neat to draw using ink that I made from the trees that I have spent so much time studying, so I made ink from bark. It’s been an interesting process to see how the texture comes out on paper! It’s a new medium and I’d love to do larger pieces with that eventually.

I am also inspired by the people who are talking to me about their favourite trees and what speaks to them in nature. I didn’t expect to have those interesting discussions with people, but it has encouraged me to go out on the land more, to really sit and be with my environment.

When I sit outside to be with a landscape, it feels like a meditation. When I look at the details of a tree or a plant, I also sit with all the senses that are related to that: the wind, the smell, and so on. A lot of my projects start with the tiny field sketchbook that I bring with me wherever I go. Right now, I am working on a tree study, where I am trying to draw a tree every month.

Sometimes, I take photographs when I am out hiking, canoeing or skiing. If I am doing a wood-burning project, it might be directly from a sketch that I did, and other times I will look at different pieces of wood and try to decipher what kind of landscapes I could make from the grains and patterns of the wood itself. Then, I just start burning!

Artist Bio: 

Beth lives in Yellowknife. Over the years — through school and the influence of her family — Beth became a self-taught artist, focusing on drawing natural elements in her surroundings. She began wood-burning in 2021 and started selling her artwork publicly the same year. She has taught classes at the Guild of Arts and Crafts in Yellowknife and has learned a lot from students in the process.  She appreciates the recognition and encouragement from community members, which inspires her to keep making art in her own unique ways.

Last Updated: October 25, 2023

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