48” x 72” Oil on Canvas 2026
In geology, an erratic is a boulder carried hundreds of kilometres by a retreating glacier, then left in a landscape it has nothing in common with. It doesn’t belong to the ground beneath it, and it can’t be ignored.
Canmore painter, Chrissy Nickerson’s newest series takes the glacial erratic as both subject and self-portrait: a painter set down in the contemporary art world, standing apart from the polished and the polite. Her brushwork is fearless, her colour unapologetic. This is a painter that refuses to blend in, and that’s exactly the point. Drawn from her backcountry sketchbook of the Bugaboos, these large-scale works invite you to look for the one that doesn’t belong, and to wonder what carried it there.
“I am a glacier.
I identify more with this moving ice than I do an erratic. My essence is solid. But my footprint ever changing. I collect dust, debris, even the plague, but as I recede I drop and expose. I am millennia old. My soul has had experiences I do not even remember. I deposited a Devonian boulder here or there enroute to my now.
I am dramatic. But you can see me coming, even predict my side-step. I definitely have left some scared, even changed peoples lives forever. The syncline’s across the east, have given the opportunity for a change of vista. I’ve disturbed landscapes but yielded rich fields.
My history, my accumulation of age and layered chaos have brought me here. I am the headwaters of now. Watch me as I crack and break under pressure. Walk over me, or feel the awe within me. I will not be forever. Do not traverse me ignorantly, for I may just humble you. Tread lightly.
I may seem to be as cold as ice, but, At my heart there is a stream that leads to the light.”
~CN
48” x 72” Oil on Canvas 2026
In geology, an erratic is a boulder carried hundreds of kilometres by a retreating glacier, then left in a landscape it has nothing in common with. It doesn’t belong to the ground beneath it, and it can’t be ignored.
Canmore painter, Chrissy Nickerson’s newest series takes the glacial erratic as both subject and self-portrait: a painter set down in the contemporary art world, standing apart from the polished and the polite. Her brushwork is fearless, her colour unapologetic. This is a painter that refuses to blend in, and that’s exactly the point. Drawn from her backcountry sketchbook of the Bugaboos, these large-scale works invite you to look for the one that doesn’t belong, and to wonder what carried it there.
“I am a glacier.
I identify more with this moving ice than I do an erratic. My essence is solid. But my footprint ever changing. I collect dust, debris, even the plague, but as I recede I drop and expose. I am millennia old. My soul has had experiences I do not even remember. I deposited a Devonian boulder here or there enroute to my now.
I am dramatic. But you can see me coming, even predict my side-step. I definitely have left some scared, even changed peoples lives forever. The syncline’s across the east, have given the opportunity for a change of vista. I’ve disturbed landscapes but yielded rich fields.
My history, my accumulation of age and layered chaos have brought me here. I am the headwaters of now. Watch me as I crack and break under pressure. Walk over me, or feel the awe within me. I will not be forever. Do not traverse me ignorantly, for I may just humble you. Tread lightly.
I may seem to be as cold as ice, but, At my heart there is a stream that leads to the light.”
~CN
Image 1 of 5
Image 2 of 5
Image 3 of 5
Image 4 of 5
Image 5 of 5