When Tottenham artist Linda Mackey was saving money to go on a painting expedition to Canada’s Arctic, she told her friends and family it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. She lied.

She made the trip in 2002, and after spending her first night on an Arctic beach she realized that this could not be her only trip to the region. In fact, it became the first step down a path that would change her life.

“I knew I had lied. I really had to share this great secret of the Arctic with others,” said Mackey.

Since 2002, Mackey has been to the Arctic three more times. She spearheaded artist trips to the Arctic in 2004 and 2006, and made a trip as a resident artist on Students on Ice this summer.

In conjunction with the trips, she has organized two artist collectives that focus on the world’s coldest regions - Arctic Quest, a group of 25 Canadian artists, and the Polar Artists Group, which features work from artists working in various media from around the world. The latter group opened an exhibition this past weekend at the Club at Bond Head Art Gallery.

The exhibition focuses on landscapes and life in the world’s polar regions. The roughly 80 pieces of work hanging on the gallery walls explore different facets of life in the north, but most boil down to a common theme — how the changing face of the landscape affects not just the wildlife, but the people that live off that land.

In 2004, Mackey made a trip to Pangnirtung on Baffin Island. The area, with its towering glacial mountains surrounding an iceberg-speckled bay, became Mackey’s favourite place in the world.

“It’s referred to as the Swiss Alps of the Canadian Arctic,” she said.

She documented what she saw in a painting called Beached Icebergs at Pangnirtung. It included snow-covered mountains and a bay full of bobbing ice.

Three years later, working as the art liaison with Students on Ice, Mackey returned to “Pang”. Before the group arrived, she raved to the students of the immense beauty of the area. She was shocked with what she saw when she got there. The snow-covered mountains had given way to cold, dull rock, and the water was now empty, save for a few straggling bergs that seemed to hold out against the warm weather.

Her students still thought the area was beautiful, but she knew things were not like they used to be.

Three short years was enough to change the landscape almost beyond recognition. That night, instead of eating dinner, she sat on the top of the boat and stared at the landscape she had loved so much three years before.

That’s when climate change really started to hit home. She documented this as well, in a piece called “The Last Triangle of Snow,” which depicts the peak of one of the mountains as the only part remaining with snow.

“The Arctic is like the canary in the mine. It’s our early warning sign for danger for the planet,” she said.

And that philosophy has become the main theme of a lot of her work. Another painting, which is also on display as part of the exhibit, is also of a landscape on Baffin Island - Auyuittuq National Park.

In Inuktitut, the word means ‘land that never melts.’ Mackey’s painting of the area proves otherwise.

“The glaciers that have never melted are now all of a sudden melting,” she said.

The painting, entitled Glaciers Go Green, proved another challenge for Mackey. She had not anticipated having to use so much green while painting the arctic, so she left some paints at home. When she saw the green grass, she realized that she did not bring the proper palette.

For the Polar Artists Group, cutting through the science and bringing the message of climate change to the wider public is a key motive for their work.

“The goal of the Polar Artists Group - our motto - is, scientists discover, and artists in interpret - together we can open the eyes of the world,” she said.

Like Mackey, many of the artists fell in love with the region after visiting. Others make the area their home, as the group also consists of Inuit artists, as well as artists from other northern countries.

Mackey’s close friend, Kathy Haycock, has a family tie to the region. Her father, Maurice, spent a year on Baffin Island in the 1920s to map the region. While the Haycocks are not from New Tecumseth, they do have an interesting tie to the area. When Maurice was returning from the Arctic in 1926, he ran into another local artist who was traveling to the area to paint — Sir Frederick Banting. Banting was making the trip with Group of Seven artist A.Y. Jackson, said Mackey.

For Mackey, the Arctic is not just something to save, but also something that saved her.

She grew up locally, only a few kilometres south of the Club at Bond Head. As a youth, she took lessons with local artist Alice Forestell and attended Banting Memorial High School. She eventually moved away, and attended art school at York University. While studying there, she found her instructors did not see eye-to-eye with her artistic vision. She became disenchanted with art, and stopped painting for a few years. When she did paint, it was at the request of others.

Then, in 2002, working as a studio assistant for acclaimed Canadian artist Doris McCarthy, Mackey got the opportunity to go north on an expedition with her. She scraped together the money teaching extra art classes and was able to pinch enough pennies to pay her way. It was a good investment.

“When I returned, I started painting for me, and all of a sudden I knew how I wanted to paint - what I wanted to paint. When I started to paint from my heart, my artistic career started to take off.”

Mackey, who moved back to Tottenham a couple years ago, now has a busy schedule. She spearheads the two art groups, as well as acts as the art liaison for the International Polar Year.

 While all the positions are volunteer, as a single mother she manages to support herself and her family by teaching art lessons, as well as selling her paintings.

Her work, along with several other pieces in the exhibition, are for sale at the club’s gallery.

The pieces will be on display at the Club at Bond Head, on the 7th Line, west of Bond Head, until Jan. 2. The art is displayed on the walls of the clubhouse, and is open to the public 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., seven days a week. Admission is free.

For more information, call Mackey at 905-936-2301.

E-mail reporter Kurtis Elsner at kelsner@simcoe.com