It began as I usually do with playing with photos in photoshop. I took two photos one of the ice on Great Slave Lake as I flew into visit my daughter in Yellowknife a few years ago. I deleted the wing of the plane and desaturated it to grey scale.

I combined this grey scale photo with one I had taken on my kitchen floor of my soapstone polar bear sculpture which my husband brought back from Baffin Island a long time ago and I got this wonderful shadowy photo that looked like the polar bear was navigating through a snowy landscape.

Then I printed it onto silk organza. It came out a lot fainter so I hand stitched the bear outline and stitched some of the landscape lines then after much trial and error decided to place it on a pieced background of quilt batting intensively stitched. What with working so many fine stitches and waiting for decisions to be clear on what I actually wanted it to look like it took me about six months to make but I love it and it has become an image that I call up when I need to be calm.

And isn’t that what art is for?