Christine Montague is a professional award winning visual artist known for her portraiture commissions, figurative landscape art, and polar bear oil paintings.

Why polar bears The character and spirit of the bears, their high intelligence think great ape, their solitary lifestyle, excellent mothering skills, their place in our world, and the very landscape they wander in, embodies all that I have tried to represent in my other artworks - spirit, character, intelligence, personality, solitude without loneliness, discovery, mindfulness, joy, beauty, escape.

Travels to the Canadian arctic Iqaluit Cape Dorset in Nunavut and subarctic Churchill,Manitoba, Canada - polar bear capital of the world and my stay at the Churchill Northern Studies Centre Churchill, Manitoba, Canada, furthered my education and wonder for these magnificent bears and the magical landscape and skyscape - the northern lights.

Polar bears are definitely a canary in the coal mine symbol of climate change and my polar bear paintings often symbolize this potential for great loss as their numbers reduce. The effect vanishing ice has on the survival of the polar bear resulted in my series such as the Sink Swim Series.

But other works simply pay tribute to this wonder animal in its magical, mysterious environment of frozen plain, icy cliffs, endless tundra and spiritual magical lights.

Montague is a a self representing artist with over 10 years experience in owning an open studio gallery in an arts destination. Primarily I sell my art online, portraits, figurative work, and now polar bear paintings are in collections in Canada, U.S.A., Great Britain and Bermuda.

Her paintings have been in over 50 shows, many of them juried.

Recently, her polar bear painting Dark Water 1 was awarded top prize in the CNE Juried Show in Toronto, Canada.

Montague lives in the greater Toronto area with her husband, children, and two cats one is named Bear, and a growing celebration of imaginary polar bears.

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