Artist Profile

my name is andrea dillingham-lacoursiere. i'm a mother, a sister, an auntie, a friend, a community member, a mobilizer, an advocate, and a painter. like most fortunate enough to be born here, i grew up with a built-in appreciation for the majesty, and the "stop-you-in-your-tracks" beauty of our environment, and our celebrated parks systems. prior to 2017 I outright refused to paint a landscape, it was a subject matter i thought best left to every. other. landscape painter. i'd spent the last few years of my professional career working with First Nations Communities to address racism, inequities throughout our systems, to shed light on the correlation between environmental violence and the continuing genocide of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls. i was working at a museum and art gallery and was to take the lead on the Canada 150 project, ultimately shaping how our community would mark the anniversary. as a nation, we were supposed to stand by that carefully crafted stereotype of voyageurs in canoes on pristine emerald lakes, with majestic mountains surrounding us, under a starry sky and a Hudson’s Bay Blanket. let’s be honest, this has been a solid marketing strategy for 150+ years. so how could we not wave flags and celebrate our sesquicentennial with cake and fireworks? i just couldn’t bring myself to RSVP to the party. the annual celebration of colonization, the methodical and systematic genocide of our First Nations, Metis and Inuit People didn’t work for me. but as a white person, or as a non-indigenous person, as a settler, and more so as an ally, i needed to step back and figure out my place in making this better – or at least less bad.  hopefully there is a more sustainable way for future generations to honour all ways, territories, and traditions.

if not for me, for my kids.  

each day, my reconciliation begins with these land. the nation’s “founders” saw the raw beauty of the Rocky Mountains, they also saw fat bank accounts that turned into enormous castle-like hotels and a railroad that made them possible to get to. a vacation hot spot for those that had the means. historically, the First People of Turtle Island sought solace and ceremony in some of the most incredible spaces found on our planet, that happen to be in our collective backyard.  places of reverence, of connection.

as Canadians, whatever shape that takes, however that identity is formed or revealed, we need to look to the people that were here first, and with respect and gratitude, appreciate the teachings, the ways, the life that existed for millennia prior to conflict. 

prior to us. 

this is why I now paint landscapes. for as much learning as we still have to do, we are all connected to and by these lands, and because of that, the stewardship falls to all of us.

thank you. merci. hiy hiy. miigwetch. mahsi.