Adrift – A New Hudson’s Bay Blanket Painting

Over the past twenty years, I have made nearly twenty paintings that reference the Hudson’s Bay Company and its iconic multicoloured stripes. I have always been drawn to the familiar combination of green, red, yellow, and navy set against the creamy white ground of the classic Hudson’s Bay Point Blanket. Few Canadian objects carry such an immediate visual recognition. Those stripes have become part of our cultural vocabulary, evoking histories of trade, exploration, Indigenous encounters and colonialism, as well as ideas of Canadian identity, heritage, comfort, and luxury.

There is also something deeply sensory about the blanket itself. There is nothing quite like wrapping yourself in a Hudson’s Bay blanket outdoors while cool air moves across your skin. It carries a particular weight and warmth, both physical and emotional. For me, the blanket has become an enduring visual symbol through which I can explore what it means to be Canadian.

New HBC Blanket Painting

Adrift is a celebration of late summer and those first warm days of fall, of intimacy, leisure, and the particular luxury of having nowhere else to be. A young couple reclines together in a boat, surrounded by deep blues and turquoise waters on a Canadian lake. Their physical closeness creates the emotional centre of the painting, while the expansive water surrounding them suggests a moment suspended outside ordinary time.

The boat becomes more than a vessel. It becomes a private floating refuge, carrying the couple into a world of their own. Beneath them, a Hudson’s Bay striped blanket introduces a distinctly Canadian symbol of comfort, heritage, and domestic luxury. Its familiar bands of red, green, yellow, navy, and cream transform the utilitarian canoe into something unexpectedly sumptuous. The blanket brings the comforts of home into the wilderness, creating a meeting point between nature and culture, adventure and ease.

The painting plays with the idea of Canadian luxury. Here, luxury is not a grand hotel, an extravagant interior, or something defined by excess. It is time. It is privacy. It is beautiful surroundings, good company, and the freedom to let the hours pass without obligation. The polished boat, rich textile, carefully chosen clothing, and sensual colour palette elevate an ordinary day on the water into an almost cinematic vision of Canadian leisure.

There is a touch of mid-century romanticism in the couple’s clothing and relaxed pose, while the bold graphic treatment brings the scene firmly into the present. I am interested in this tension between nostalgia and contemporary life, between the familiar imagery of Canada and the way we continue to reinvent it.

The boat points toward the horizon, yet there is no urgency to reach it. They are simply adrift, carried by water, weather, and each other.

At its heart, Adrift is about the luxury of being completely present. It captures that fleeting Canadian summer moment when the landscape becomes both destination and sanctuary, when the water stretches endlessly outward and time seems to slow down. The greatest luxury is not what surrounds us, but the rare freedom to simply be there, together, with nowhere else to go.

The reference photo used in making this painting came from Canadian photographer, Ryan Rowell