“A Piece of Shield Country” by artist Neil Clifford

 The rugged Canadian Shield provides the inspiration and the materials for my new series of sculptures. While scouting rapids on wild rivers, hiking through dense forest or snowshoeing along frozen shorelines, I encounter special stones. Eroded and etched, some fractured and split by the powerful forces of wind, water, ice and changing seasons – I choose each one for its natural beauty. With great care and effort, I bring these stones back home and create sculptures to compliment their unique characteristics.

Last fall I paddled the north shore of Lake Superior. It was a unique experience, with some calm, easy-going days that could turn wild very quickly, forcing us to shore to escape crashing waves which could capsize a canoe in an instant. It wasn’t uncommon to watch three metre waves tumbling onto the shoreline, and for half of our six day trip we were windbound. I remain awestruck by such dramatic shifts in weather, from glassy waters when you could see the lake bed 60 feet below, to screaming tempests which can rip massive trees out by their roots.

In Canada, I have paddled the northwest passage in Nunavut, tripped in northern Ontario towards James Bay, and run whitewater rivers in Quebec.

Every journey presents unique challenges, and over the years, there were moments of bliss and adventure that could so easily have given way to disaster. Three years ago in Quebec, I stepped into a narrow crevasse while portaging around a falls, canoe on my shoulders. I gashed my leg, and within a day had developed a severe infection. It took another three days to get off the river, and arriving at a local hospital, the doctor took one look at my leg and said, “we better get to work. I don’t want to have to amputate it!”

Not every trip is so dramatic, thankfully! But I am inexorably drawn to wilderness, to experience the land as if I was the first to explore it. In some cases, I may have ventured into wild, far-away areas that few if any people had previously travelled.

I remain humbled to this day, when coming face to face with the power and majesty of our vast Canadian wilderness. Influenced by my journeys into the wilds and by those whose lives remain connected to the earth, I strive to make compelling works of art for the viewer that evoke our dynamic natural world.