Kathy Haycock has been a supporter of numerous Canadian environmental and animal habitat protection foundations for many years. Mainly a landscape painter, Kathy firmly believes that environmental protection of important habitat is the key to protecting endangered species. She commits a percent of all sales of her work to environmental foundations in Canada. 

 

In 2006, along with Linda Lang, AFC, Kathy co-founded  Polar Artists Group, an international society of polar artists dedicated to promoting awareness of the polar regions. Polar Artists Group linked polar artists and scientists through conservation efforts and promoting awareness of the polar regions, the changing climate and environment, and engaging people through art, education, and special projects. This unique collaborative relationship between artists and scientists increased the public's awareness and understanding of polar science, created a new medium for scientific outreach, and engaged artists in the early stages of research communications and outreach. It linked directly with the 2006 International Polar Year research and helped it meet its outreach and public awareness goals. On July 22, 2006, twenty-five artists including Kathy marked the 100th anniversary of Amundsen’s 1906 navigation through the Northwest passage with a journey of their own. During a twelve day voyage, the group, Arctic Quest, recorded their impressions on canvas, paper and film as they visited remote Arctic communities to paint and distribute art supplies. On their return they participated in an ambitious program of exhibitions across northern and southern Canada and Alaska, following through with their mission to share their impressions of the North and coinciding with International Polar Year. 

 

More recently Kathy and two painting partners, Joyce Burkholder, AFC and Linda Sorensen, AFC co-authored a beautiful art/conservation book released in 2014. "Wild Women, Painters of the Wilderness" is an art book with a message. Through their landscape paintings these three artists share their passion for the natural world and appeal to the reader to be more aware of conservation. 

 

Kathy was also the co-ordinator of the annual 'Mystery of the Park' art exhibition in Algonquin Park, Ontario Canada for 10 years. Local, national and international sales there support 'The Friends of Algonquin' a group that looks after nature interpretation, prints periodicals and operates the bookstore at Canada's most famous provincial park.

Kathy is a Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographic Society and through the Society she supports awareness, education, exploration and conservation of Canada's vast geography.

 Kathy grew up in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. In 1973 she moved to a rural setting near Eganville, and now lives on Lake Clear, located midway between Ottawa and Algonquin Park.

Though largely self-taught her interpretation is strongly influenced by her father, Arctic painter Maurice Haycock and by his close painting partner of 30 years, A. Y. Jackson of the Canadian Group of Seven. Early Arctic trips with her father introduced her to the lure of the North and inspired a sweeping and graceful movement in her work. Beginning as a spinner and weaver of tapestries in 1973, Kathy worked in stained glass and then pastels before eventually discovering her passion oil painting in 1998.  

 

Kathy's lively landscapes celebrate the natural world. Scenes are animated with weather, temperature, wind, light and rhythmic movement. She works outside on location in all seasons, inspired by the immediate and exuberant experience of painting from within a landscape. Larger canvases are completed in her Woodland Studio-Gallery at Lake Clear, near Eganville. 

 

She has traveled to the Eastern Arctic and Greenland since 1975 most recently in 2016. Yearly painting trips also include Canada's Northwest Territories, the Yukon  and Alaska, and the southwest desert country of Arizona and New Mexico. The appeal is always the same, to paint the character of the wilderness countryside and bring it back to the viewer as an artistic statement of importance, fragility and beauty worth conserving.  After her travels Kathy returns home to explore and paint the wilderness wetlands, sparkling waters and wooded hills of the Algonquin region in eastern Ontario. 

 

Kathy's award winning artwork is represented in private and corporate collections across Canada and in the USA, Europe, UK, Middle East, Australia and China.