When Jane Gooch first camped at Lake O'Hara in 1975, she could not have foreseen how important the Rockies would become in her life. She travelled from her home in Vancouver many times during the summer months to hike in the mountains, and her love of the alpine landscape eventually inspired her to study the artists who have painted in the Rockies. Her great enjoyment of the outdoors and a lifelong interest in art were combined with her academic background in writing and research.

Mount Robson: Spiral Road of Art celebrates the centennial of Mount Robson Provincial Park with over a century of remarkable landscape paintings inspired by the Robson region in the Canadian Rockies. This volume includes an extensive Introduction with historical and cultural background to the 50 colour plates, all documented and described, illustrating artists' works in a variety of styles and media from 1907-2012. Early artists include A.P. Coleman, the first explorer, and Group of Seven members A.Y. Jackson and Lawren Harris. In addition, the works of 17 contemporary artists show that the Mount Robson area continues to stimulate landscape art up to the present. Only 10 of the images have been published before.

Jane Gooch is the author of three books that illustrate landscape art inspired by special places in the Canadian Rockies: Artists of the Rockies: Inspiration of Lake O'Hara (Alpine Club of Canada and Rockies Network, 2003), Mount Assiniboine: Images in Art (Rocky Mountain Books, 2007), and, most recently, Bow Lake: Wellspring of Art (Rocky Mountain Books, 2010). These books combine her love of hiking with a lifelong interest in arts and letters. She is a graduate of the University of British Columbia and holds a doctorate in Renaissance Drama from the University of Toronto. Jane resides in Vancouver and has taught for years in the English Department of the University of British Columbia. Her next book celebrates the art of Mount Robson and will be published by Rocky Mountain Books in 2013 to honour the centennial of Mount Robson Park.

Jane Lytton Gooch's profile page

...as Gooch admirably demonstrates, Mount Robson continues to inspire a host of artists to capture its lakes and glaciers, its alarmingly steep rock faces, and its mountain peak.—Maria Tippett, BC Studies