Alaska first whispered in Lindsay Carron’s ear in 2015.

That was the summer some friends invited her to lead painting tours of the beaches and forests near Juneau. A three-month gig turned into six months, and by the time she packed up to go home to Los Angeles, she was already itching to return.

Alaska has lured her back every year since, with 2018 marking her third summer as an artist in residence with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. She spent this July in the Yukon Flats and Togiak national wildlife refuges, with a several-days stopover in Anchorage to connect with urban Alaska Natives whose families and stories are being traced, through her work, back to the villages and regions where they started, tens of thousands of years ago.

As she describes it, the call she hears is about shedding her self-protective layers and opening herself to Alaska’s wildest places and the people who live there. As a self-described art activist and storyteller who is deeply committed to conservation, Carron seeks to create art that invites people to slow down and experience the stillness and urgency of some of the earth’s last wild places.

“My outlook from the beginning was ‘I don’t just want to hang pretty pictures on walls, I want to have an impact,’” she explained.