Joel Harding’s “Alpine Forces”

Joel Harding. Photo: Joel Harding

A Cranbrook artist explores the mountains’ essential shapes and hues

by Karmin Snow

“Alpine Forces” is Cranbrook resident Joel Harding’s debut solo exhibition, featuring a series of paintings that seek to render the oppositional characteristics that define a mountain. Motion so immense it can only be perceived as stillness.

Formations that have taken shape over millennia illuminated by fleeting sunsets and brief seasonal wildflower blooms. Is it even possible to paint a mountain, or only to approximate its presence?

The backdrop of the Canadian Rockies, visible from the gallery window at Key City Theatre in Cranbrook, where the exhibition takes place, provides viewers with an immediate reference point for Harding’s ongoing interrogation of the subject.

Harding began his experimentation in 2018 with the question, “What is the potential energy of a mountain?” From this, he created early works that explored scale and abstraction. Throughout 2024 and 2025, he developed a more decisive conceptual approach, visual language and palette. While some works, such as Mount Evans, are grounded in specific places Harding has experienced, most are abstractions formed from an amalgamation of memory, sensation and reflection—a self-described “love letter to the mountains.” Each painting is housed in a custom hardwood frame handmade by the artist, reinforcing the tactile, grounded quality of the work.

Harding’s paintings invite slow looking, contemplation and spatial awareness

Having studied visual arts at the University of Calgary, Harding spent time learning the techniques and traditions of Canadian painting, but ultimately found himself drawn to a career in design and graphic work. After spending the past 20 years focusing on his career, family, pets and volleyball coaching, Harding gradually returned to a painting practice. The creative experimentation with the “Alpine Forces” series has been a slow process of painting one coat at a time with precision and intention.

“It begins with inspiration drawn from outdoor adventures—hiking, climbing, snow riding, or simply observing the quiet grandeur of the wilderness,” Harding says. “Back in the studio, those experiences become a process of reduction: refining ridges, valleys and lakes into their essential shapes and hues.”

When asked if he sees his work as part of the lineage of the Group of Seven or other Canadian landscape painters, he responds that the connection lies primarily in a shared reverence for the land itself.

Harding’s work suggests that reduction, rather than detail, may bring us closer to the essence of place

Stylistically, the influence of artists such as Ellsworth Kelly and Josef Albers is evident in Harding’s commitment to bold, minimalist forms and luminous colour. These are colours that feel true to the mountains—shifting constantly with cloud cover, precipitation and reflected light. The Minimalist Art emphasis on creating work that is inseparable from its environment is also present. Like Donald Judd’s iconic installations at the Chinati Foundation or Mark Rothko’s immersive Rothko Chapel, Harding’s paintings invite slow looking, contemplation and spatial awareness.

Originally from the prairies, but having lived in the southeast Kootenays for five years now, Harding has developed a deep connection to a community that shares his appreciation for the mountains—not only as sites of recreation, but as places of introspection and mental clarity. This lived experience informs the emotional undercurrent of his work, grounding abstraction in personal geography.

In contemporary landscapes reshaped by industry, climate change and development, painting a mountain is indeed possible—but perhaps an intense, minimalist rendering is the most relevant and honest approach. Harding’s work suggests that reduction, rather than detail, may bring us closer to the essence of place.

Harding “invites viewers to embark on a visual journey that mirrors the experience of being in the mountains—a journey of exploration, awe and quiet reflection.”

“Alpine Forces” is on display in the gallery at Key City Theatre until May 29, 2026, offering audiences an opportunity to engage deeply with both the artwork and the landscape that inspired it.