I have always been interested in art, every year I took classes in high school. It didn’t hurt that you didn’t have to work very hard in those classes. I painted some in oils when I was a teenager, but I fell out of the habit after getting married and having children, just couldn’t find the time, or I should say, I didn’t make the time.
I started painting again in 2001, when my mother and I joined Edna McPhail's ‘Time out for Seniors Painting Class’. We get together once a week in the winter, we show each other our accomplishments and decide which topic we’ll paint the following week. Then in March we have our Grande Finale, our spring show. Edna has been an inspiration in my wanting to paint the familiar objects around me. I get great satisfaction in painting the local subjects of the Peace area and show what it is like living on a small family farm. There is nothing like the rural life.
I was born here in Dawson Creek. I have lived all my life in the this community, first on a farm in Willow Valley, then after I got married, on a farm in Farmington. I would never want to live any place else, this country has all a person could ask for. We have mountains, rivers and lakes in our back yard, every kind of weather you can think of and lots of friendly people, but not too many of them. I enjoy it all.
Pretty much all my work so far, comes from photos that I have taken over the years. I use my computer extensively in preparing a picture to paint. I blow them up quite large so I can see more detail in them. Sometimes I will combine two pictures together to make a composition, and I also do lots of cropping. You can find lots of different compositions in one picture. Now that I have a digital camera I can shoot to my heart's content, I just have to keep up with the filing so I can find what I want when I want.
I also dab a little in water color, but it’s not my strong suit, you have to think too far ahead in the painting of them; whereas, in acrylics you can always paint over it until it’s what you want. I generally put my paints away during the summer months as there is no time with gardening and my other hobbies, which are horse trail riding and woodworking.
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