Always rich with traces of past or present horror, landscapes play a central role in Jillian McDonald’s recent series of video works. The Thaw is a video and installation project developed through a residency at the Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba in March of 2015. The video was shot on location around Southwestern Manitoba, from Virden to Souris Valley and the Riding Mountain National Park, with the help of over twenty volunteer actors from the community. The participants, masked and costumed in shades of white, acted out animals – both predator and prey – inhabiting the nearly still prairie while it transformed from winter to spring. The animals wake from hibernation and begin to hunt. Meanwhile, the previously pristine white fields can no longer act as protective camouflage as the snow melts to expose the vulnerable white creatures against the stark landscape and the towering sky.