Landscape and light. Black rocks, 300 feet high, both imposing and spectacular. The sun coyly sinking to the horizon, not quite setting before it makes its way up again.

Pat Fairhead lets out a sigh as she tries to paint a verbal picture of the scene. Usually well-spoken, the artist has few words to describe the sights she has seen in the Arctic, where there really is virtually nothing but landscape and light.

“I can’t tell you; I have to show you,” she says, getting up from the table where we’re sipping tea in her Bala sunroom. “You have no idea – pardon me for being rude – of what the place is like. It is impossible to describe.”

A collection of paintings documenting her two most recent trips north leans against the wall. Covered in plastic, the vibrant lighting is still visible.

In the Arctic, and elsewhere, light has become central to Fairhead’s work.

“The light is absolutely marvellous,” she says. “There’s no one around; the land is exposed and it’s stark and it’s scary. … That’s what I paint — the light on the water, sky, rock — that’s the essence of it.”

The first time she travelled north, Fairhead was “gobstruck” by the scenery.

“You go out in the Zodiac a couple of times a day and go bombing around in between the icebergs. I mean, ha!” she laughs. “The first time I went … I was in heaven.”

Since then, she has visited eight times, often on Russian ships that hold 100 passengers and feature lectures ranging from climate change to Arctic wildflowers. She has spent time in Grise Fjord, Canada’s northernmost village. Even today, most of her fellow Arctic travellers are men “which is half the fun,” she says.

If one thing’s clear about Pat Fairhead, it’s that she suffers from an incurable wanderlust. Painting trips have taken her from Zimbabwe to Machu Picchu. She has canoed the Queen Charlotte Islands and the French River. She has danced the night away in Crete.

Although an injury — the result of dancing in Crete — slowed her down, Fairhead doesn’t plan to stop travelling. Her most recent trip to the Arctic was just last fall.

“Things happen and I do it on the spur of the moment usually,” she says. “If I’m going to the Arctic, I usually make up my mind and go.”

The self-described “oddball in the neighbourhood,” Fairhead admits she has a mind of her own. But it wasn’t always easy.

“I didn’t understand why I felt so differently from what seemed to be the norm,” she says. “I mean, I did not like keeping house. I don’t like cleaning. It’s a waste of time. I want to paint.”

When she realized she wasn’t “housewife material,” she found solace in books. After reading more than 100 biographies of strong, artistic women, she knew what she wanted — and what she didn’t.

“What inspired me about them was that they decided to be themselves and decided they were not going to live the way they were brought up,” she explains.

A frequent lecturer, Fairhead says her favourite topic is “those Bloomsbury women,” Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell and Vita Sackville-West, three women associated with women’s rights and the Bloomsbury Group, a British intellectual and artistic movement. For the artist, who has an entire wall stocked with art books, the subject of women and art is an open door for conversation.

“My dear,” she says, when I ask her what she has to say on the subject, “if you want to come here once a day for the next six weeks...” She trails off in laughter as we eat dinner — warm bowls of chili topped with yogurt — at a wooden table beside her bookshelf.

In life, the vanguards of feminism keep her going. But in art, Fairhead is inspired by painters such as Turner, Monet, Matisse and Canadian David Milne. And judging by the books on her shelf, the list could continue for some time.

“I just love painting,” she says in an emphatic whisper. “All kinds. All kinds.”

At the Ontario College of Art in the 1940s, Fairhead was educated by Group of Seven painter Franklin Carmichael, whose bright yellow stool now sits by the door in her studio. It wasn’t Carmichael’s work that inspired her, though; it was his teaching.

“He was tough,” she says. “He would hand something back and say, ‘Pat, you can do better than this.’”

For the past six years, Fairhead has been teaching a class of her own at Muskoka Place Gallery. With a Master of Arts from Goddard College and a Master of Education from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, she specializes in “self-directed learning” and has taught numerous workshops over the years.

One thing she emphasizes in class is that familiar carpe diem attitude that guides her travels.

“If you have any idea or feel any kind of urge to do something, do it,” she says of the creative process. “Don’t muck up your head by saying, ‘What’ll happen if?” Do it.”

Fairhead sees painting as experiencing a moment.

“I get turned on with something to paint, and then I choose the medium, and the size and the colour … to suit the content,” she explains.

Unlike many local artists, Muskoka is rarely at the centre of her work.

“I don’t paint trees anymore; I paint abstraction. I never want to paint another tree as long as I live,” she says pointedly. Muskoka, for Fairhead, is a peaceful retreat from city life. It was to Muskoka that her stepfather brought the family two days after they moved to Toronto from England, where she was born.

“I just thought I was in heaven,” she says. “I came every summer and said, ‘Sometime I am going to live in Muskoka.’”

Ten years ago, she finally left her Toronto studio – and its streetcars, lumberyards and traffic – and moved to a place on Brady Lake. A couple of years later, she bought her current home studio, which overlooks the Moon River. Now, she’s trying to relocate to Bracebridge.

Occasionally, clients visit Fairhead’s home studio. But, her frank demeanor taking over, she’s clear about her need for space.

“When I’m painting, I’m really hot to paint,” she says. “I don’t invite people in. No, I spend my time painting. And people that know me know that you don’t walk in on me; you phone first. If I’m painting, I won’t even speak to you. I’m not going to stop.”

She’s not going to stop — ever, it would seem. Artists don’t retire, Fairhead says emphatically.

“You never lose the ability to learn … The incident of brain cell renewal is huge, particularly in the creative arts,” she says, citing some studies she recently read.

Georgia O’Keeffe sculpted well into her nineties, and Picasso continued worked late into life. Pat Fairhead plans to do the same.

“The ability to create — there can be a great burst of learning, which I tell my class,” she says. “They’re saying, ‘Oh, I’m 60; I can’t learn.’ ‘Lady, you’re on the way!’”

Pat Fairhead’s work will be displayed at Chancery Gallery in Bracebridge beginning Sept. 3. The exhibition, called North of 70, will feature work from her 2007 and 2008 trips to the High Arctic. She is also represented by Trias Gallery in Toronto and Thielsen Galleries Inc. in London.