For stained-glass artist Gail Wilson, everything looks different in the light of day.

“I can hang something up and it’s constantly changing, depending on the season and the weather,” she says from her homemade cement and log studio outside her home on the outskirts of Port Carling. “Different sections will be highlighted, some darkened. I do the initial piece but then Mother Nature sort of takes over.”

Her home itself is a piece of art, a perfectly round circle with few walls and a wood fireplace in the very centre. Surrounded by nature, it’s easy to see where Wilson finds inspiration.

“It’s everywhere,” she says. “I often don’t have a choice — things will just pop out at me and I’ll say, well I have to do that now.”

The Muskoka landscape is also often embedded in her work. Her frames are local “worm’s wood”, “imperfect and stunning” and Muskoka quartz is featured in several of her pieces.

After blasting the foundation for her previous home in Sudbury, she spotted the idea for one of her award-winning pieces.

The pink rock separated and along the natural split was a black pattern resembling a flower. She named it “rock rose”, snapped a photo and immediately went to work creating the stained glass version.

“Some people think it’s a hummingbird,” she says, tracing her finger along the glass edges. “I don’t see that at all, but I’m not about to deter them. Other people just don’t get my work at all, and that’s cool too.”

Another piece, two polar bears approaching an iceberg, was “as clear as day” to her on a small rock she spotted while beachcombing.

“I know what you’re thinking,” she laughs. “These crazy artist types, right? But it’s true — it’s often right there in front me and all I have to do is follow what’s already there.”

While the concept and design is always her own, Wilson says she gets design advice from her daughter Sandra.

“She’ll swing by the house and take a look,” says Wilson. “She’ll say to me ‘Mom, maybe this should go here instead.’ And I’m so thankful because I wouldn’t have ever thought of that.”

The glass itself is often Wilson’s muse too. One piece, “Piclasso,” hangs in Wilson’s sunroom with fiery orange and copper waves bursting across the glass. “I just knew it was her hair,” she said of the abstract woman holding a flower bouquet.

Another, “From the Deep” is a cross-section of a single bloom springing up from the ground, complete with deep roots that twist and tangle across the purple and black glass. Then, on the surface, the backdrop is a transparent sheet ingrained with tiny droplets.

“I saw that glass and I thought, ‘well, it’s raining then’.”

The piece recently won the award of excellence at this year’s Muskoka Arts & Crafts Spring Members’ Show in Bracebridge.

The dark glass used for soil was part of another piece Wilson did years ago, but she always knew she would dismantle it.

“It was so beautiful and I knew I wasn’t doing it justice,” she says, finally content with its use.

Wilson herself says she too is a work in progress.

She left her busy life as an entrepreneur in Toronto for a “geographical cure” she found in the forests surrounding Port Carling. She built her home — now her studio — from cement and firewood, “as old fashioned as you can get.” She lived there for years, giving her plenty of time for self-reflection and awareness.

She then started her own construction company with her then-boyfriend and insisted on being hands on.

“I drove the dump truck myself, as well as booked the appointments and handled the finances,” she remembers.

The two built her unique home farther back from her studio and she began looking for creative outlets.

But it wasn’t until she started experimenting with stained glass as a hobby that she realized her calling.

“It’s what I was meant to do,” she says. It’s time-consuming and requires patience, but Wilson says it’s all worth it in the end.

With coffee in hand, sitting in her sunroom, Wilson sits studying her creations around her. The light beams through Piclasso’s hair and splashes a fleck of orange onto Wilson’s jacket.

“I’m finally where I was meant to be, I think,” she adds.