This exhibition of paintings, photographs and scientific information was derived from an ongoing series of wilderness canoe expeditions organized by the Wilderness River Expedition Art Foundation. It focused on the September 2006 expedition down the George River in Arctic Canada with seven artists, many of whom have been on the earlier expeditions: Robert Bateman, Jean-Louis Courteau, Lindsey Foggett, Lee Kromschroeder, Gary McGuffin, Rob Mullen and John Pitcher. They have all had first-hand experience of the wilderness they depict, and have “lived their art.” These have not been weekend junkets or workshops in nature preserves, but long, difficult and inherently dangerous expeditions on remote and rugged rivers of the great North American wilderness. Two of the artists put it well. Jean-Louis Courteau said,“There’s a feeling of loneliness and a little bit of danger that gives the landscape a dramatic feeling. That drama is what I’m trying to get in the painting.” and Gary McGuffin added, “When it takes weeks of paddling to get somewhere, it changes how you see things when you get there.”

In addition to the artwork, the exhibition included information from some of the foremost scientists who have studied the Boreal Forest, the largest terrestrial ecosystem on Earth and (as yet) the greatest expanse of wilderness in the world. A specific focus on the George River region comes from crewmember Dr. Stephen Loring of the Smithsonian Institution’s Arctic Studies Center. Dr. Loring has conducted anthropological and archaeological research in Labrador and Quebec for over thirty years.

The exhibition, which premiered at the Wildling Art Museum, traveled to other museums afterward, and was displayed at the Smithsonian Institute’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC.