Carol Loeb is a formally trained painter and art educator. Inspired by landscapes, Carol works mainly with acrylics on canvas in a fluid, expressive style. The pageantry of colors, shapes and patches of light captivate her imagination. Her work abstracts nature but maintains recognizable subjects: wind blown leaves, deep foreboding shadows of northern pine forests or purple-stained wood of pine beetle infestations. The colors, details, and perspective warp, blending into an expressive interpretation of the natural world. “It is impossible to live in a country as broad and wild as Canada and not be influenced by the natural world and the vast uninhabited spaces. My most recent works celebrate and examine the overlooked and ordinary within the landscape. I leave the grand scenic vistas for others and focus on the common things we often neglect to acknowledge as worthy subjects for painting. I paint the common, the everyday landscape, in all its glorious, mundane character such as the tire tracks left at the side of a roadside turnout dissolving slowly in the rain. To find these landscapes, I often pull over to the side of the road or trail, and I must find the idea, subject and inspiration for a painting from that spot. It is amazing how interesting, beautiful and overlooked the arbitrary can be.” Carol currently teaches Visual Art at Lower Canada College in Montreal, Quebec. Upon completing her art studies, she taught in Ontario for seven years and then went overseas for eleven years, teaching in five different countries around the world. She loved the opportunity to not only learn new approaches to art making and teaching, but to experience a rich diversity of art, architecture and cultural traditions in her travels. This summer, to comemmorate and celebrate Canada’s 150th birthday, she is planning to complete her travels across Canada on the Trans-Canada highway, stopping every 150 km to find the inspiration and subject for a series of 51 paintings. The Trans-Canada highway, one of the main unifying structures in the country, is 7493.5 km long (roughly 4650 miles); dividing it into 150 km segments will yield 51 paintings, including the endpoints at kilometer 0 and 7493.5. At each roadside stop, she must find the inspiration and subject for a painting within one kilometer of the 150 km marker. She will be joined on her artistic journey by fellow artist and friend, Alison Grapes, who will also take up the 150 km cross-country challenge. They are putting out a ‘call to artist’ to join our project and have their artworks included digitally along side our paintings. For more details go to http://transcan150xtwo.weebly.com or ask Arta Gallery, and official sponsor of our project, for more details. Carol’s artworks are included in many private collections in Canada, United States, United Kingdom, and the Philippines. Her work has been exhibited in Canada and the Philippines.