From time to time people remark that these hills were, in another age, amongst the biggest mountains to ever exist on our planet. Originally hailing from British Columbia, I took this as comic hyperbole. It is, however, fact. The Gatineau hills were indeed once taller than the current Himalayas, sculpted from molten magma that was erratically spewed from the upper mantle. Predating the Cambrian explosion, they formed a lifeless landscape of jagged and soaring peaks, punctuated by volcanic explosions and tectonic movements. Just imagine.
The Gatineau hills of today are the roots of this ancient mountain system, and are all that remain from billions of years of erosion and tectonic change. The rocks tell the geological story of a region that has morphed time and again, somehow resulting in the bucolic rolling topography that I currently pass my days painting. The magic of these old and worn mountains remains, like a spectre or spirit, whose story of geological transformation feels almost mythical in proportion. Acknowledging the origin story of these hills makes one realize how fleeting and momentary our time is in relation to geological or “rock” time.
The paintings in this exhibition pay homage to these hills, or one might say mountains, in their past and present state, and to the passing of geological time. Some depict actual lakes and woods atop the hill where we reside, others are imagined geometric renderings of the mountains of yesteryear, or yester-age.
I recently read that the study of rocks and geology is not dissimilar to time travelling. To place ourselves in the vast continuum of geological time makes me feel an uncomfortable sense of awe and perhaps even fear ~ for geological time is truly sublime.
Fears aside, for now, at least, I live on the side of a hill which was once a mountain. - GL, 2026
