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Artist: Abby Wilson Puzzle Design: Siri Olson & Marcy Wiedrick Dimensions: 42 cm x 32 cm Piece Count: 477 Difficulty: 3 out of 5 |
Table of Contents
About the Artist: Abby Wilson
Abby Wilson is an artist, author, and adventurer. She lives in Nelson among the West Kootenay mountains of British Columbia on the traditional territories of the Sinixt, the Syilx, and the Ktunaxa peoples.
Abby's paintings capture her love of the mountains with bright, bold acrylic landscapes. Her work explores how geometry aligns with natural geology, pushing on shape and line to stylize the world.
Abby is an Associate Member of the Federation of Canadian Artists (FCA). Abby combines art and adventure with plein air painting- hiking studies down from the mountains into her home studio. Abby’s work is held in private collections in Canada, the US, and Europe.
Links
Abby is the editor of the West Kootenay Hiking website, an online hiking guide with over 100 trails reviewed. She gathers all of her painting inspiration from the mountains and encourages everyone to get outside!
All Trails - Lake Hikes in Monashee Provincial Park
Siri & Marcy's Puzzle Design Notes
Some puzzles begin with a piece of artwork we immediately know we want to design.
Suncatcher wasn't quite like that.
When Abby Wilson's paintings came across our table, there were several we loved. Our community (that’s you!) voted too, and everyone had favourites for different reasons.
Suncatcher was a winner, and it kept pulling us back.
The warmth in the colours.
The way the clouds seemed to hold hidden shapes.
Not to mention the story of how this painting came to be.
When the helicopter flew away
Last summer, Abby packed for a week in British Columbia's Monashee Mountains. She and her father were joining the Kootenay Mountaineering Club for a backcountry trip into The Pinnacles, where she planned to spend her days hiking and painting en plein air. She packed her bags with easels, paints, and canvases. The helicopter arrived. Everyone gathered with excitement.
Then the clouds rolled in.
Heavy weather settled over the high alpine campsite, and after hours of waiting, the trip was cancelled. The helicopter lifted off without them, taking Abby's week of mountain painting with it.
A few days later, her father discovered there was another way into the mountains: a steep hiking trail leading to the same alpine lake they had hoped to reach by air. So they packed lighter, climbed, and arrived in time for one of those moments that disappears almost as quickly as it arrives. The tops of the pine trees caught the final rays of sunlight. Clouds lit up around their edges. Without her full painting kit, Abby did the only thing she could.
She grabbed her camera and captured the light.
That's the moment Suncatcher preserves.
Start with the light
The funny thing is, we didn't start designing around the trees (the “suncatchers”). We started with the sun’s rays. One of Abby's other paintings, Kokanee Sunrise, gave us an idea for radiating lines, and as soon as we settled on Suncatcher, we knew we wanted those rays to become part of the puzzle itself. Instead of squeezing them into an existing design, we drew them first and built the rest of the cutlines around them.
As you solve the puzzle, those rays slowly begin revealing themselves. They emerge naturally, almost as if you were watching golden hour unfold in the mountains. That became one of our favourite parts of the design: the “light” arrives gradually.
Abby's way of seeing changed our way of designing.
The more we looked at Abby's work, the more we noticed how much she thinks in shapes.
She talks about how geometry lives inside geology, and once we saw that, we couldn't unsee it. Her mountains carry rhythm. Her clouds contain structure. Rather than introducing our own visual language, we wanted to respond to hers. As a result, geometry started showing up everywhere.
A drafting compass became a whimsy—not because it's a navigational tool, but because it felt like a quiet nod to the way Abby builds her paintings. Symmetry began appearing in unexpected places too: the hang glider, the dragonfly, the rock skipper. Even Abby's initials became hidden geometric forms tucked into the puzzle. For Siri, whose mom was a math teacher, that became a natural integration.
The painting suggested where things belong
One of the elements we both remember most is sitting with the artwork and seeing possibilities appear.
Marcy kept coming back to the clouds. "I like the cloud shapes. You can see where whimsies naturally go."
The water created different opportunities as well. The bright orange in the sky opened others. Every section seemed to suggest its own personality, and instead of forcing whimsy placements, we found ourselves responding to what the painting was offering.
That became true throughout the entire design.
Beyond the painting
One detail came directly from Abby's life beyond painting. Incredibly, she spent two years hiking and documenting 77 West Kootenay trails for her published hiking guide. That number became too meaningful to ignore, so we hid a trail marker labelled “77”. We even made the puzzle 477 pieces as another nod to that milestone.
It's one of those details that rewards anyone who knows Abby's story, while still feeling at home inside the landscape.
At the time of creating, Abby had recently become a mother and was often hiking with her little one. Once that fact entered the design process, we couldn't stop noticing opportunities for companionship; a hiker carrying a baby appeared among the whimsies. Then the animals started pairing off too: parents and babies, creatures quietly sharing the landscape together.
Many of those animal whimsies became two-piece discoveries, so there's this lovely moment where one piece appears first and the companion shows up later.
Some of our favourite references never made it onto the insert card. The clouds became secret hiding places for nearby locations: cherries for Cherryville, grapes for the Okanagan vineyards. (Salmon ended up in the sky but it was originally in the water before we ran out of room!) They might be small surprises, but those are our favourite kind.
Learning how to build together
Suncatcher mattered to us for another reason too. It became Marcy's first large collaborative puzzle. As professional designers, it’s rare to collaborate on projects with such personal taste and subjective decision-making.
We were constantly sharing the design files, testing placements, moving whimsies, and returning to discover the other person had quietly improved something we hadn't thought to change.
Sometimes a dragonfly shifted.
Sometimes a mosquito found a better home.
Sometimes two separate ideas became one stronger solution.
"To have someone to design a large puzzle with before I do one on my own was so helpful," Marcy says.
Together, we walked through colour alignment, testing connections, and making sure every lock felt intentional. That was especially true of the 15-piece alternate solution. We wanted to recreate a new glowing sunset. We had to be very careful to select and align the colours in each piece so the finished miniature feels like stained glass.
The result? A real “suncatcher” that feels like it’s catching the light.
We also created a second alternate solution—a four-piece… er… wait… that one’s a secret. No doubt a-boot it.
Upon reflection, this puzzle is very naturally a collaborative puzzle. Not because it's easy (although it is more approachable than some), but because the colours in the artwork give people different places to enter in. Someone can quietly claim the sky while someone else works the trees. The clouds become their own territory. The water becomes someone else's. No “stealing my pieces" in this one! We think that's part of the charm. The colours stay distinct enough that everyone can find an entry point without feeling like they're competing with each other. We hope our collaboration will feel part of solving the puzzle!
Catching something that disappears
Looking back, the title feels even more fitting than we realized at the beginning.
The trees catch the sunlight.
Abby catches the moment.
We tried to catch the feeling.
Beautiful moments can disappear quickly.
Thanks to you, this one gets to stay.
Whimsy List
3x Starbursts
Camera
Hang Glider
Glacier Lily
Lupine
Loon & Chick
Sandhill Crane & Colt
Black Bear & Cub
Northern Flicker & Chick
Hiker & Baby
Owl with Baby
Black Slug
Banana Slug
Compass
Trail Sign
Rock Skipper
Hiking Boot
Sun
Bunny
Raven
Clark's Nutcracker
Eagle
Geometric Dragonfly
Mosquito
Salmon Cloud
Grape Cloud
Cherry Cloud
Abby's Artist Initials
15-Piece Suncatcher Hidden Puzzle
Hidden Secrets
Clue 1: Secret Image
Clue 2: Puzzle Map
Clue 3: Building Demonstration
