Barbara Brooks, a prolific painter touched by the majesty and expanse of Jasper’s mountain landscape and who worked with many of the country’s top artists, passed away at the Alpine Summit Seniors Lodge on Aug. 24. She was 68.

“Flamboyant, easy, alive... she was very giving,” said Marianne Garrah. “She mentored so many artists.”

“She was a freethinking radical and political artist,” said Greg Deagle, the first person Brooks met in Jasper. “Barbara had a powerful conviction to paint what she saw.”

Well respected locally and abroad, Brooks’ work took her around the globe, where she exposed many to her impressions of Jasper, which was marked by a deep love of nature.

“For a good time nowadays, I go and sit at the foot of a glacier. When I’m out jogging I sometimes stop to hug a tree or two. I talk to them... I feel fortunate to be so close to nature and making a living from my work,” she told the Edmonton Journal during a 1991 interview.

Focusing primarily on watercolours, she was the first Canadian artist to have a solo exhibit in South Korea when she exhibited at Dankook University in 1994. The exhibit sold out and Brooks received high praise for her work.

“She inspires us especially due to her originality in the use of colours, showing the magnificence and the gracefullness of nature’s beauty,” said Chang Choong-sik, president of Dankook University.

The following year, she travelled to Hokkaido Japan, where she taught a watercolour course as part of the cross-cultural outdoor painting program.
“She was ecstatic about that. To be able to travel at that calibre... she was treated like royalty,” said Garrah.

“The Seol solo exhibit was the height of her career... It was a sellout exhibition. It put Barbara on the international stage,” Deagle said.

Born in Libby, Montana, Brooks attended Montana State University in Bozeman for a year before moving to the University of Washington in Seattle to study English Literature In 1973, she travelled to Winnipeg to live in an artists commune before coming to Jasper in 1976. She originally worked as a chambermaid, youth hostel parent and stenographer, before first exhibiting her art in 1984 at the Jasper Craft Fair. She studied with many of Canada’s finest painters, including Jack Reid. Reid also passed away Monday. The two became close friends, and Reid’s work influenced Brooks deeply.

“Jack taught Barbara how to paint a birch tree,” said Wendy Wacko, arts curator of Jasper Park Lodge.

“There were two sides to her art: what she wanted to do, which was more bright and vibrant, then there was the side that needed to pay the rent,” Garrah said.

Brooks painted for more than 20 years in Jasper, and her work appears in many private and government collections. The Canadian government has chosen many of her works to appear in government buildings across Canada and abroad. Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge commissioned her to paint many paintings, which were later moved to the Alpine Summit Senior’s Lodge. By 1995, she was becoming a well known painter across the country.

“She would have become a major painter, at least in Alberta if not Canada,” Wacko said. “She influenced a lot of painters in town.”

On top of painting in Korea and Japan, Brooks also taught at Red Deer College, and was the Artist in Residence at the University of Calgary’s stream ecology program.

“Her teaching was always infused with political conviction. She used her teachings as an opportunity for her political platform,” Deagle said.

Her ties to nature were always evident in her work, and her selection of medium. A profile in the Edmonton Journal included a large photograph of Brooks hugging a tree, and Brooks was a strident defender of nature, opposing logging and mining in the country.

“(Watercolours) are something you could take with you. It’s not dirty or smelly. Watercolour is the choice of the nature painter,” Garrah said.

Brooks was remembered by everyone who met her in town.

“She was a very strong individual,” said Counc. Gloria Kongsrd. “She drew a lot of attention to Jasper.”

Brook’s painting career was cut short after suffering from an aneurysm, which affected her painting arm. However, her work lived on through a series of prints, and her teaching.

“We had her out last year at Artists in the Pines. She had a grand old time painting by the river,” Garrah said.

 Brooks is survived by two daughters, Andrea Brooks and son Jay Brooks and Samantha Sansome and grandchildren Magnus and Lotus Cottell. A memorial date has yet to be set. Donations are to be directed to IOTAD.