Recent paintings from the Wild Things series- please watch for available new works by checking this page or following Kari Lehr Art on Facebook, and @karilehrart on Instagram.
To purchase work from this site, please contact me . I ship all over the world and accept credit card and eTransfer (within Canada). Shipping and tax (when applicable) is added to all totals.
Recent and Available Works
"Neighbourhood Watch"
24"x24" acrylic on canvas, 2025. Framed in fir.
$1995 + GST
Sold!
"Midsummer Moment"
11"x14" acrylic on canvas, 2025. Framed.
$725 + GST
Available at the Fernie Arts Co-op:
https://www.fernieartsco-op.com/
250-423-7044
"Best in Show"
15"x30" acrylic on canvas, 2025. Framed.
Sold!
Artist Statement
"Best in Show"
One Small Acre - A group show at the Fernie Arts Station
Instructions for Living a Life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
~ Mary Oliver
“We had the most magical morning!” A dear friend told me earlier this spring. Immediately curious, I demanded to hear the details. Soon I was fascinated to learn about a ritual that takes place in areas I had never heard of, called leks. As she described in detail (and she’s so good with words, this friend) the morning she and her biologist husband drove to the mating grounds of the Sharp-tailed Grouse and quietly watched the unfolding magic, I sighed and said, “I’d love to see that.” Sure enough, a few days later we were invited to join them early the following morning.
By 6:00 am we were on our way to the mystery location, bumping along a nondescript road until we came to a stop, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. Listening, I could hear them before I could see them - a chirping, clucking, flapping with the background hum of…. a push lawn mower? Couldn’t be. Then silence. Suddenly, there they were! In amongst the scrub, like little wind-up toys, were dozens of Sharp-tailed Grouse, or Prairie Chicken, gliding here and there, wings outstretched and tail feathers vibrating, creating the lawn mower sound that had initially confounded me. This display unfolds every dawn for weeks in spring, a generations-old mating ritual that is fascinating, delightful and often comical to watch. Like a grouse-game of freeze tag, they would zoom around the grounds, and then, as though responding to an invisible signal instructing them to “Freeze!” they would suddenly stop as a group, and stand like wee statues across the landscape while the females strolled by, cooly looking them over like a shopper assessing the best cut of meat… not unlike the dance clubs of my youth! With their tails held high, they looked like miniature white-tailed deer among the shrubs. By the time we pulled away, my heart was full and my face sore from smiling.
When I told my 90 year-old mother about this experience, she recalled how she and her dad would go watch them on the prairie just as we had that morning: quietly sitting in the truck and observing from a distance. How did I not know this story? How did I not know that this phenomenon was what inspired the Plains First Nations prairie chicken dance? How many other displays and rituals play out daily, seasonally, annually, that I have not noticed? Of course the answer is that there are innumerable mysteries unfolding all around us, in our own one small acre and beyond, every moment of every day. All the tired old platitudes become sacred wisdom: God is in the details. Stop and smell the roses. Seize the day.
Or, in other words by Mary Oliver:
“Sometimes I need only to stand wherever I am to be blessed.”
"Immersion"
18"x24" acrylic on canvas, 2025. Framed.
$1795 + GST
Available at the Fernie Arts Co-op:
https://www.fernieartsco-op.com/
250-423-7044
Artist Statement
"Immersion"
One Small Acre - A group show at the Fernie Arts Station
Water.
At some point during the past decade, a slow, steady current of awareness began to dawn in my consciousness. As so often is the case, what was on the radar for so many people for so many reasons, was not relevant to me in a conscious way… until it was.
Where I live, there is a movement to reintroduce coal mining in a landscape on which thousands of people, animals and plants rely for dependable, clean water: the Eastern Slopes watershed - the headwaters of major river systems that supply water to Alberta and beyond. It was this movement which made me look more closely at something I had, quite frankly, taken for granted.
There are the facts of water we glean through our life’s journey: Water makes up seventy percent of the earth’s surface. Our human bodies are sixty percent water. We can only live 3 days without water.
Water is life.
It is fascinating to me the ways in which our body’s life-sustaining systems mirror the broader life-sustaining systems in the natural world - an understanding of which so much of the collective human consciousness has grown away from. Systems which we are willing to compromise or even destroy in the name of “progress”, and “the economy”. We pit one against the other as though there really is a choice. As though water will always be in abundance, to nourish and sustain us even as we demand more and more from her.
For many of us, these assumptions are simply part of the proverbial water we have been swimming in for generations.
Tending to the one small acre of my consciousness begins with finding hope in the face of the overwhelm and despair I feel about what we are doing to our earth. I use my voice, literally and through my pen and my art. I gain inspiration from those who are doggedly calling to account the ones who are meant to be leading us from harm towards a sustainable future. I lean into the idea that we are in a paradigm shift - or perhaps we could call it a watershed moment - which is raising our collective consciousness to new/old ways of being in harmony with the natural world of which we are just a part, and on which we rely for physical and spiritual sustenance.
In her book Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer writes, “Women have a natural bond with water, because we are both life bearers… We carry our babies in internal ponds and they come forth into the world on a wave of water. It is our responsibility to safeguard the water for all our relations.” My hope is that perhaps we are all slowly coming full circle, carried on that same current of dawning awareness (or remembrance) of the sacred, life-giving environment that was our first home.
"Wild at Heart"
24"x36" acrylic on canvas, 2025.
Commission, NFS
