Lara Felsing traces back her love for art to her mother's passion for creating, and the support her family showed for her own.
"My mom makes traditional clothing. With hide, floral broadcloth, she makes ribbon skirts and shirts. And she definitely was my first sewing instructor. And as a child I drew all the time at my grandmother's kitchen table while she babysat me and my parents worked and my older siblings were at school. I was always really encouraged to be creative. I mean I make baskets in my practice now, but I've been making baskets since I was a little kid," Felsing said.
The Edson-based artist grew up in Peace River, and studied art at Red Deer Polytechnic. After that, she said she went to Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver, as well as the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne, Australia.
Her new exhibition Kinship Ecologies is running in the St. Albert Art Gallery until July 19. Felsing said her work, and her practice of making compostable paintings and creating her own paints through natural materials, is about instilling respect of the land.
"I'll think about what petals or roots, or pine needles and pine cones, what can be used for pigment. Even something very common place that we probably have in our immediate surroundings. Things like dandelions make beautiful colours," she said. "It takes a lot of patience, but it's really rewarding. It just instills this respect of the land, because not everything is available when you need it. Sometimes it's a lengthy waiting period to wait until certain colours come out in the spring or summer in order to harvest them and make pigment."
The process varies between a day or two, or even as long as a month, depending on the what the material is. Felsing also plans what materials she uses for the theme of her piece.
"Sometimes it feels like the material aligns very quickly," she said. For example, if she's thinking of a piece centred around wildfires, she said her mind goes to charcoal or the needles that fall from the black spruce trees in the forest around her home. "It's not always about getting the exact colour, it's about the intention behind it."
Much of her work is centred around themes of the natural world, as well as climate change.
"My practice is a pretty direct response to what's happening on the land where I live," she said. She was evacuated twice due to the Edson wildfires in 2023 that burned over 200,000 hectares. Luckily, her home and work were not damaged.
The experience helped inspire a work where she wrapped trees in gratitude blankets made from second hand fabric and lined in a civil defence blanket from 1952. The blanket ceremony took place in May 2023, after she had already been evacuated once. She was evacuated again the week.
"I just felt that I needed to show gratitude towards the forest where I harvest," she said.
Her love for art that she took from her mom carries through to the rest of her family.
"Being around creative people really feeds creativity in others. I find the same thing with my family. If one person in our household is making something or doing something we kind of all gather and participate. I make pine needle baskets, my son makes pine needle baskets," she said.
Kinship Ecologies will run in the St. Albert Art Gallery until July 19, and you can visit Lara Felsing's website to see more of her work at www.larafelsing.com
