How This Vermont Artist Is Using Her Ski Paintings To Give Back

In Snow Day, an oil painting by the artist Carrie Pill, snowflakes zip past, and skiers, bundled against the cold, seem prepped to take another run. 

The artwork was inspired by Brattleboro Ski Hill, a non-profit community hub in Brattleboro, Vermont, which asked for donations last summer to fund needed repairs and upgrades. With Snow Day, Pill decided to help. A portion of the proceeds from the painting and prints, which are now on sale, will go towards the humble ski area.

“I know I’ll never be able to, say, buy them a new groomer, but I do know that smaller donations really add up,” she told POWDER. “It’s uplifting to know that your art is doing some good, even beyond all of the wonderful benefits that art on its own provides.”

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Pill, who has painted since childhood, said she’s identified as an artist ever since she could hold the materials. While earning a studio art degree at Green Mountain College, she found her preferred medium: oil paint.

She wasn’t born a skier, though. Instead, Pill’s passion for snow sports came in her late 30s. First, it started with Nordic skiing, which she called a “gateway drug.” Then, she dabbled in several disciplines, from alpine touring to tele-skiing. The latter “felt like an art form,” said Pill. “Certainly not the way I was doing it, but tele-skiing is a dance.”

Pill has since paired her love of skiing and art by painting ski areas throughout the Northeast, often en plein air—that is, outside of her Rutland, Vermont, studio and on the slopes. After she’s done painting, she gets some laps in.

The artistic approach “came out of my thirst for adventure, love of ski history and culture, and the challenge of outdoor painting,” she said.

She’s skied and painted more than 20 ski areas to date, chronicling her adventures on her Instagram page. The subjects include recognizable haunts like Mount Snow and Sugarbush, Vermont. Pill has also painted New Hampshire’s famed backcountry ski zone, Tuckerman Ravine, as well as sunnier scenes.

Snow Day isn’t the first time that this artwork has involved charity. Recently, Pill partnered with Ski Vermont to focus on painting and skiing the state’s ski areas. Part of the sales proceeds went to Vermont Adaptive Ski and Sports, an organization that works with people with disabilities. Pill said she found it to be “an easy and rewarding addition to the project.”

Like a few other ski areas throughout North America, her latest beneficiary is volunteer run. It sells $5 lift tickets, runs a lone t-bar, and only accepts cash or checks.

Such traits make Brattleboro Ski Hill a far cry from the Whistler Blackcombs and Jackson Holes of the world. There is, of course, no gondola or buzzing base village that draws visitors from afar. But the hill has its own charm that resonated with Pill and, presumably, the skiers who call it home.

“These places are often community run, independent [or] locally owned, affordable and beautiful in their own way,” she said. “I think they bring us back to the heart of it all, the pure and simple joy of skiing.”

You can see the rest of Pill’s work on her website by following this link.