Right: Satoko Naito, known as Rico, pictured with a painting she created for an art show in 2017. In the current exhibit, Rico's featured artwork, Mother and Three Cubs is based on an experience she had at Old Fort Point. 聽| Supplied photo
The work of two local artists, Pascale Robinson and Satoko Naito, known as Rico in Jasper, is featured at a fundraising exhibit and sale at the Jasper-Yellowhead Museum and Archives, Enchanted Forest and Other Treasures.
Robinson's painting, Rose Marie's Rock is a creation of a scene that caught her attention halfway between Maligne Lake and the Sixth Bridge.聽
"I was driving up to Maligne River and I saw it, said, 'Oh, that's cool - there's a tree growing out of a rock in the middle of a river,鈥欌�� she said.
The painting shows off the red and green part of the forest, Robinson said it is a marker of today's conditions with pine beetle infestation.
It wasn't until she was asking for feedback about her painting when someone recognized it as Rose Marie's Rock. Robinson also learned it has been featured in a Marilyn Monroe movie when the actress was in the area decades ago.
In Rico's creation in the exhibit, Mother and Three Cubs, she used a four-leafed and a five-leafed clover she found close to her home. For that reason, the original can't be preserved and there are only six limited edition prints available.
Her inspiration for the image comes from an experience she had at Old Fort Point as she was hiking with her husband Ray and two-and-a-half-year-old daughter Hana on June 5.
They were at the second set of stairs when they saw some commotion.
"There were people in front of us. They were coming down quickly," Rico said.
"I saw the grizzly and three cubs behind them. It was scary."
A few moments later, from the vantage point of the parking lot, Rico said, "I saw many sheep coming down the hill because of the bear too."
Since then, she added, 鈥渁ll the brown and black stuff in the woods looks like bears when I am hiking鈥�.
Robinson said she loves to paint mostly landscapes or anything to do with nature, and the primary mediums she uses are acrylic and oil. She has also done some work with charcoal.
Robinson was born into an artistic family.
"My dad's side of the family are decently artistic," she said.
Her great uncle, Jasper resident Sandy Robinson, is a watercolour artist. Her focus on painting piqued when her grandma gave her paints for Christmas when she was 13.
"I flipped through some gardening books of my mom's and I found a garden shed with a rose bush by it that I wanted to paint," she said.
It was a good experience for Robinson. She liked what she created and she had fun doing it.
When she was 17, Robinson applied to be a member of the Jasper Art Gallery (JAG) and had some mentorship from Michael Flisak, a painter and a JAG member.
In the fall, Robinson will be going into her third year of Fine Arts studies at the University of Alberta. She has taken art history classes and drawing classes where she sketches live models.
These days, Robinson said she's trying to get into using oils.
"I really like the vibrancy of it," she said.
About her artwork, Robinson said, "I just really like doing it: drawing, painting."
Represented by Mountain Galleries, she paints in the studio.
"It's like going to your workplace, you get on a different mindset," she said.
The message of her work, Robinson said, is "just to appreciate what we have around us鈥�. Robinson said lately, "I've been trying to paint forest floors, close-ups of moss - focus on the insignificant that you don't look at normally."
Her creative mind is busy.
"I have so many different ideas," she said. "All of my ideas start around nature. They usually have a base in plants or mountains."
Her style, she said, is to use "very bold, basic colors and lines".
Rico and Ray moved to Jasper in 2012 from Saitama, Japan, and the area has become an inspiration for a lot of her work.
"We really love the mountains, and we love the community too," she said. "The people are very kind and nice. I belong to the Jasper Art Gallery, they're pretty nice."
Rico has been creating works of art for many years and her work has eye-catching precision.
She said she was born in a house filled with her father's paintings and started drawing when she was just a baby. Since then, she has been working naturally with various techniques like drawings, paintings, paper collage, lamp-making and book-making.
"The motifs that I choose are usually very normal things, like a tree, birds, flowers, buildings and people on the street,鈥� she said in an email.
鈥淚 like the kind of beauty that you can see everywhere everyday but is finally noticed when you [see] it in your daily life."
Creating art, she continued, "is a very natural and normal activity for me". She said she loves to make art for her daughter too.
Wendy Wacko, director and founder of Mountain Galleries, said, she always likes to include emerging artists in exhibits.
An artist herself, primarily a landscape painter, Wacko said, "I'm always trying to capture the mood of the day." She loves working outside and said creating art is "about learning how to see, and the energy and emotion that goes into each work of art is what's important to me." Wacko is represented at the Scott Gallery in Edmonton. Art, she said, "comes from your soul".
She said Robinson, who is represented by the gallery, is 鈥渋mmensely talented鈥�.
鈥淭here's nothing we won't do for her,鈥� she said, adding that Robinson had been invited to be an Artist in Residence at the Banff Springs Hotel August 6 to 11.
Wacko said Rico was extended a special invitation as she is a 鈥渧ery talented local artist鈥� and described her work as 鈥渆nchanting鈥�.
The exhibit at Jasper Museum will run until October this year. As art sells it will be replaced, and a percentage of each sale will be donated to the museum.
