Painting Towers of Rock: Cairns of Love

I walk and hike a lot. It keeps me fit, but more importantly, it keeps me seeing the world.

From the coastal shores of Newfoundland to the beaches of Vancouver Island, I have put on many miles exploring Canada on foot. Walking gives me a different way of experiencing a place. I notice the small things: the shape of a rock, the way light falls across the water, a weathered piece of driftwood, or something unexpected that someone has left behind.

One thing I have encountered again and again along Canada’s coastlines and trails is the humble tower of rock.

Cairns are carefully balanced piles of stones that have been created for many different purposes and across many cultures. They can mark trails, commemorate a place or person, serve practical purposes, or simply become spontaneous works of human creativity. I often find them along beaches, where people have taken a handful of stones and transformed them into small sculptures against the landscape.

In Canada, these structures can sometimes be confused with inuksuit or inukshuk. While both involve stones, they are not interchangeable. Inuksuit are culturally significant structures traditionally created by Inuit and other Arctic Indigenous peoples, with specific purposes and meanings. The familiar human-like inukshuk has also become a widely recognized symbol associated with Canada and the North.

The structures I encounter on my walks are often much simpler. I think of them as rock towers. Perhaps because there is something irresistible about the challenge: how high can you build a tower from loose stones before gravity wins? I have seen them lining beaches where people walk every day, marking trails to lighthouses in Newfoundland, and appearing along paths in northern landscapes. Some are tiny and delicate. Others are surprisingly tall, each stone balanced precariously on the one beneath it. And there is something deeply human about that act. Someone has stopped walking long enough to build something.

Painting of rock towers – Cairns of Love

These little towers have begun appearing in my paintings, becoming another recurring symbol in my continually expanding view of Canada. They are part landscape, part sculpture and part evidence of human presence. My newest painting, Cairns of Love, features two rock towers standing side by side, constructed from stones of different shapes, colours and textures. I was drawn first to their height, but then to their individual forms and the relationship between them.

Two towers. Side by side. Perhaps that is what caught my attention most. I see these cairns as small monuments to connection. They are temporary, vulnerable and entirely dependent on balance, yet someone took the time to build them. There is affection in that gesture, whether the builder intended it or not.

For me, Cairns of Love is another way of painting what I find when I am out walking through Canada: the landscape itself, and the small traces people leave behind within it.

Another discovery. Another story. Another little piece of Canada that has found its way onto my canvas.