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hello everyone thank you so much for joining me today my name is sarah huffman and i am the art rental and sales associate at the

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art gallery of alberta we welcome you to our meet the artist series a part of aga live

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here at the gallery we embrace the teachings of tatewa a kree phrase meaning welcome there is

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room even in our in our house even the virtual one everyone is welcome i am delighted to be

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your host for this hour joining me today is artist marla sholey before we dive into the subject i’d like

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to highlight that this is an interactive event and we’d like to hear from you you’re welcome to use the chat window on the

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side screen to share your comments as we discuss with marla if a question gets unnoticed or unanswered at the time

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please know that we will review all unanswered questions before we wrap up today’s event

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so marla sholey was born in edmonton in 1962 she attended the university of alberta

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and received a bfa degree with distinction nicely done marla in the spring of 1984.

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her major area of study was painting in other areas of study including drawing

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and sculpture sholey has been exhibiting her work since 1984. her work is included in the collections

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of the alberta foundation for the arts the university of alberta hospital both as marla holt

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as well as numerous corporate and private collections in canada the united states and the

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united kingdom please join me in welcoming our july meet the artist marla sholey

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hi everyone hi marla nice to see you and be seen by you yes you as well and

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lovely peace that you have behind you oh thank you very much um yeah first i’d

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just like to say thanks to everybody for joining me tonight especially on a nice finally

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warm july evening i do appreciate it i like to meet people face to face and

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discuss my work i find i love to hear their feedback i love to hear their comments

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i’d like to answer their questions so as sarah said feel free to ask ask questions away and i’ll do my very

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best to answer them as i was thinking about what i was going

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to say tonight i kind of started reflecting that my life as an artist and probably

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artist in general is kind of like a journey and since i’ve been a practicing artist for quite a number of years as

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the intro would tell you um it’s certainly been a journey for me it’s had its ups its downs its highs its

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lows but it’s one that i feel really fortunate to have been on and i’m really excited to

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continue with it so i do want to show you all one thing that will indicate the length of my journey here

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one moment

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ah i don’t know how well you can see this that’s amazing uh this is the same palette i’ve used

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for probably 30 years you can see uh i’m not really good at

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cleaning it off and probably paint on here that’s uh still kind of fresh so

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just to give you an idea this is the journey of my artist’s life i got admitted off here so someone could

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put it away for me that’s great marla that’s in our piece in and of itself really

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well yeah my my daughter who’s assisting me here this evening has already told me she wants it you know at whatever point in time i’m no

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longer painting so what she’ll do with it i don’t know if she’ll have it on the wall because it is pretty heavy

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yeah yeah and there’s kind of a small fortune in paint on there but if it’s over 30 years it’s okay

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yeah absolutely do you have a question already from jeanette um how much do you actually think that

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your palette weighs um five

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pounds between five and ten pounds maybe yeah that’s hefty size of a small chicken perhaps

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[Laughter] and is that all um all acrylic or is

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there some oil it’s oil paint yeah paint okay yeah right yeah and you know that like obviously that takes quite a while for

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it to dry and hard in that venue i used to scrape it off a little more regularly and i’m just getting lazier in

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my old age i did have a professor at uma who also had a palette similar to that

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he shared with us when we visited him in fourth year so so that being said i’d also like to say

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i can’t think of a time in my life when i wasn’t doing some kind of art when i wasn’t drawing

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when i wasn’t painting one of my earliest childhood memories honestly is going into my room

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sitting down at whatever was in the room at the time and drawing something with a pencil on a

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piece of paper so being an artist is not just something you do it’s kind of something that you are

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as far as educational background i was lucky enough in grade 10 to have jim vest as my art

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teacher oh neat yeah some of you are probably familiar with his work he’s he’s uh he was originally from england

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but he’s very well regarded uh canadian landscape painter i guess you’ve referred to him

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as so unfortunately he was only there for one year but i i happened to be there at the same time that he was so

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that’s really neat we do have him and we have a couple of his uh pieces in our rental and sales as well well there you go

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and uh i did see on it uh one of his pieces that are on the block the last time i was there too so

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awesome um so after high school i as you said did you my bfa at the u of a

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the time i was there i’ll just advance to the first image

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a lot of the professors were very engaged in doing a color field abstract

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painting so we were i i would say somewhat encouraged to

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move within that field so this is this isn’t a really great slide the the inside kind of has a shadow on it

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but i i still have it in the basement on a huge stretcher frame i thought it would be interesting to

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show it here tonight um it may get taken off the stretcher soon and i might do something massive

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for myself i haven’t decided yet though that’ll be a big undertaking yeah so what would be

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oh sorry marla i was just gonna ask uh what year did you create that piece this would probably have been 1982 okay

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i’m pretty sure 1980s and then your year of study like were your first year second year what would have been second year yeah

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first year we did not too much color work first six months of bfa at the u of a in

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those days anyway was strictly drawing drawing drawing foundations the basics

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well that’s mine cubes in every way shape and form you could think of

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we did move on to figure drawing and just getting the foundations down which actually i think is really helpful and

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really really appropriate yeah absolutely yeah it helps you understand what you’re going to create

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whether what what medium you’re using is your choice but having that foundation yeah is really

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important yeah so the next image is just another student work probably this would have been from third year

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okay a little bit different i was experimenting with different shapes and and texture and stuff you

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can’t really tell from the slide but i think there’s gravel cool something something in the

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dark area i can’t remember what the substance was so yeah uh then fourth year again totally

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different i think i was kind of under the influence of matisse at the time i did quite a few

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of this similar kind of subject matter and then added uh portraiture in with

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that yeah this is the fellow we went to school with who i’ve lost touch with unfortunately

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he was a lovely lovely fellow so he was nice enough to pose for me for this and again this one’s really large too

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so yeah scale was something that they emphasized as well

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work in a large scale so some of the pieces i do now are large like the one behind me somewhere small you know i it just

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depends on how i feel if i want to experiment right this was um

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probably the first serious landscape that i did it was in our bfa graduation show and as i mentioned to

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you earlier we graduated we had a very small space

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uh your four years of work you were only allowed to show one piece which is very difficult to

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choose and i had done a few landscapes in fourth year and something about this just

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kind of spoke to me but this was the piece that i wanted to show and it’s interesting because landscape

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has kind of become my my passion after that yeah yeah that’s amazing

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so that’s actually been what i have shown since graduation yeah and also

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i’ve had like a very lovely long uh relationship with art rental i highly

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recommend them if you want to you know just test drive as i call it a

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painting or whatever it makes it very easy and very affordable for people to do and they have i i have to say thank you

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you’ve sold a fair number of my pieces over the years this next couple are a couple of the

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older ones uh sold yeah absolutely and as like

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from an art rental and sales perspective a lot of the clients that i get who are interested in your work

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really find that connection to the piece and and they just see it as something

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they’ve seen before and it almost has that familiar feel of this is alberta or this is

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my home and bringing it home to them and having it forever is

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amazing yeah oh sorry go ahead that’s lovely to hear because that’s actually one of the things that i really

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enjoy that people will say to me i like this particular one someone said to me i’ve been to this

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place i know where it is this is my favorite place in the world this

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person actually said to me it’s up at uh jasper and cabell meadows if people are familiar with it

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the glacier might this is just a small glacier up there it might have changed shape since then but that’s where that one is well and it’s

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original it’s you know a photo can only do so much in that context you are able to recreate it in a

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painting and someone to see that and recognize that so clearly is really neat yeah yeah you have a

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question marla from robin in terms of landscape pieces how do you usually get ideas to paint

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do you usually use photos if you do do you usually take the photos oh yeah good question i work 99.99

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exclusively from photos yeah and until very recently they were always photos that i took myself if

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they’re not photos i take myself it’s usually one of my two daughters have been taking photos

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from me within the last three to four years it might be you know we’re driving somewhere

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i’ll say you know i i can’t take a photo when i’m driving but look at that take some photos [Music]

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and the reason for that is definitely i want it to be my own image and my own interpretation of that

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image there’s millions of beautiful photographs out there but it’s not

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necessarily my image so if i ever were to take someone else’s i would

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definitely ask their permission first i i would never source out something and and not know where it came from

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right right but yeah i i i started using photos from electronic

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sources not too long ago and just propping up the ipad and i really miss having the photograph in my left hand when i’m working i’m

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usually always holding that holding the photograph obtaining from the photograph so yeah yeah yeah this is another older

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piece that art rental sold some years ago and i just really like the feeling in this

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one it just gives you the feeling of the sunny the sunny mountain field yeah it’s very

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gentle this is one that’s there currently again

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this is um caval meadows up at jasper this is i guess i’d like to say something

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about materials that i use most of my paintings are oil paintings

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this particular one was done on a beautiful piece of pre-primed linen that someone actually gave me

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many years ago it was wonderful but it’s very expensive so

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most of what i do is on cotton but i do try and use uh artist quality paint as much as

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possible for a variety of reasons i prefer oil paint they last forever

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here’s another little object from my uh this is the last tube of paint from 1980

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where it is still usable still good yeah see i don’t use a lot of red so

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maybe that’s part of the reason if it was yellow

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and i like the oil paint the the way you work um wet on wet with acrylic by fine you know

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if you if you want to like block things in and build up layers acrylics good for that but to me

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i just prefer the oil paint yeah absolutely i’m an oil paint snob i have to

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purchase your paint from is there a specific spot in town where you where you go oh well um the paint spot

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is definitely the number one place i love to go to i know the owner we actually worked

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together many years ago yeah yeah yeah they’re definitely very very

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knowledgeable very friendly yeah super helpful so shout out to all their stuff

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especially now yeah this is another one that’s currently with our rental um my lovely children

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when they were young once in a while i will paint the figure

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within the landscape not too too often but i do like to do it because it does provide a little bit of

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i guess a challenge right right landscape you can be very very free in your interpretation

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the figure especially if you want it to be recognizable you have to be a little more precise

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with right so again it’s just um hopefully it gives you a nice nice

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feeling of what it was like following you guys through the woods very whimsical i really enjoy that piece

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it to me when i look at it i see um twilight dog park

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it was somewhere in the city i can’t remember exactly where it was but it was definitely taken in the river valley

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yeah yeah yeah wonderful

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yeah again i know uh landscape is like a narrow

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kind of subject matter but within it there’s a lot of um variation you can

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have like i’m always trying to challenge myself in different ways for instance i’m just going to take myself off the

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video here for a minute so lower right you can see uh i really like the way the rocks are

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rendered in this particular piece so for me that’s a challenge i i

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i’m always striving to do things that are a little bit different right so and again i just want people to

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have the sense of being there if if that was the one defining thing about my work it would be

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i want you to feel like you’re there and you have the feeling of being there and and just enjoying the scene for whatever

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it is well i 100 believe you that is i feel

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like my toes are in that water that would be nice today definitely to have to

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work in the water and so for doing a piece that has water

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in it what how is the process for you do you

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where where would you start um well in general with anything i usually

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sort of work from the top and work towards the bottom but i do also work overall

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as far as working and where things should go or or marking certain say with this one

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putting a little bit of green in the top and then working it into the bottom working it overall so you see how one piece

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affects everything else within the piece right absolutely because once you put something down and you feel that

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real connection to it you kind of have that inspiration for something on the other side or what to

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play with yeah absolutely with this piece this the water would just have been built up with layers and layers and layers

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as soon as you think well it’s at the point where if i do anything it’ll either improve it or make it worse

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it’s time to stop then yeah exactly oil is i feel oil is a little bit more

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forgiving than than acrylic in a way because you can kind of you know work it into something else

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it really depends on personal preference and and your method of working i like to work wet on wet like if i if

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i’m putting a layer of dry paint or new paint on dry paint to me it feels a bit odd

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like sometimes i will do it but it’s it’s out of my comfort zone for some reason yeah

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this uh this particular scene is actually it’s looking at kelowna i’m not

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sure that’s downtown but the artist license i was thinking of today when i looked at this

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i totally removed all the people walking along that boardwalk there

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i prefer to think no crowds no people i don’t know whatever reason that was for but yeah

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it’s a nice peaceful uh summer scene in kelowna no worries it is hot out today for sure

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yeah i do have a question for you myself do you have an

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overall goal or an outcome that you’re hoping to create when you begin a new piece i know you

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had talked about you want someone to feel like they’re there but

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maybe you can take that question as more of a as a technical and a tactical standpoint of

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you know goals for yourself within using a certain medium or a certain image or

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anything like that sometimes i i have almost

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a specific thing in mind that i’m trying to achieve right to say i feel that i never 100 really

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achieve vision in my mind i mean i i’m not saying i don’t

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think any of my pieces are successful it’s just they’re not exactly as i would have

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envisioned them in my mind um i don’t this is maybe not a good example of that but i’ll maybe touch on

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that a little later when one of the ones i’m going to show in a little bit here um

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but yeah just the number one thing is to convey the way that the scene made me feel and

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i hope it makes you feel the same thing like if you’re if you’re in edmonton in january

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and it’s minus if i look at something like this it’s kind of like oh it’s like a breath

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of fresh air right absolutely it takes you some it if you might not be in that place right then

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it can take you there yeah yeah

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so this is uh another older piece that our rental sold years ago and it’s a bigger departure because it’s done

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with pastel which i do work with periodically um

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i used to more frequently than i have lately i i actually did start a pastel piece this last week

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and compared to painting it’s just taking me forever i’m like oh my gosh drawing is hard

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so different it really is right yeah but i think you can tell like the the quality of the mark making etc

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i think an artist brush stroke or the way they draw it’s almost like a signature or a finger print in itself

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if you look at certain subject matter by say monet or by renoir right they would have

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painted the exact same scene you know if you’re familiar with their work i feel that i can tell immediately

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which one painted which it’s just the way that they put the paint down and the mark making so

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absolutely yeah so pastel and then here is a newer

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that’s really neat i really enjoy that piece yeah yeah this one is uh currently at

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art rental and it’s um actually it’s elk island park obviously in the fall yeah

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but again it’s it’s the same kind of vigorous mark making and the contrast between the yellow and

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the blue as again as i look through my work i’m like i use that a lot obviously that’s my dopey thing but

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sometimes when you don’t you know you do it piece by piece you don’t really look at the big pictures so yeah it’s even quite fun for me to sort

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of look through things and reflect on my practice as a whole yeah

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but yes pastel is it’s got its pluses and it’s minuses so yeah

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absolutely i do like to switch between mediums though again that’s another way it kind of keeps your practice fresh but

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also within the last year or two started doing some watercolor paintings oh okay

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which are it’s it’s a challenging medium people often think it’s good for a beginner not true

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don’t you want to be a bird water colorist

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get yourself a good painter and you know learn some techniques it’s i do enjoy it though it’s uh i’ve

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had a few varying degrees of success i think yeah yeah and so with when you’re approaching a

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watercolor because i’ve heard many different things from artists over over my time um do you prefer

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to put to put the water down and then the color or the color and then the water or do

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you do you know combinations of of different things for different shading areas i’ve never heard of the color and then

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the water i’ll have to try that it depends on if i’m doing a large say as a background

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sky right i would probably wet that area of the paper and then add the color

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smaller areas i just dilute the brush and mess around with that but i’m very

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impatient in general with watercolor you need to be patient you have to let it dry between your

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layers and i just don’t want to do that i want to go i want to go and i’m done

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this was the one i was referring to a little while before when you were saying uh

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the question you can ask right at this particular time i was looking at

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a lot of tom thomason’s work and i was i just always so struck with

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how bold he can be with color especially that deep deep blue deep reds

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i kind of set myself i’m gonna do that in the water when i when i do this particular piece

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well as you can see it’s not really that bold the blue little you know but there is it’s kind of muted like

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sometimes you have to know how far you can push the color before i think maybe it’s gone overboard

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but that’s a good example of you know practice not exactly meeting yeah your objective yeah

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absolutely but something else i did try and convey in this particular piece

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a lot of people really responded like oh i love the yellow sky and they probably thought it was supposed to be a sunset

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what i was trying to convey was if you’re in the mountains and you’re hiking in the day

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and it’s a cloudy day but you know the sun is about to come out that’s an amount of the feeling of the

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light that you know any moment it’s going to break out and it’s going to be a beautiful blue sky this is kind of what i was going for

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with this i really enjoyed the mountain that you have in the background

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because it’s so gentle but it’s such a big solid mount that’s really neat

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yeah that would be a really great piece in a living room or an office

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just because it really has that warmth but the shading as well i really can say that well i do believe

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you guys sold this about a year and a half ago [Music]

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i wasn’t told exactly where it went but i have a feeling i know where it went and i was quite pleased about where it went i don’t know if

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we’re able to share that or not we’ll leave that to jeanette

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so leading into that like the feeling of light these are some of my newer pieces that i’ve really

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really really enjoyed doing both in terms of trying to convey that sense of light and also

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this different shape i had stretchers really for years and years and reused them and they were

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sitting around for a while and i’m like what am i going to do with these and it just occurred to me like a really

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vertical subject matter like these tall trees yeah right on this and i it just was so much fun to do i

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just loved him i loved this whole series and i to me it’s like it’s almost the door that’s leading you

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out you know you can actually step into the painting or you can step into the scene yeah and also the way the way the light

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comes through the branches there it made me think of unfortunately i’ve never been there but perhaps a stained glass in a gothic

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cathedral yeah that the light would come through so to me it’s there’s almost a reverence when

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you’re out in nature sometimes so this i did kind of a series of

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these particular subject matter this is this is another one that’s related

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where again i just the objective was really to show the feeling of that light that comes

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through the leaves when you’re walking through the forest and the sunshine and just the way all

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the colors reflect and it’s it’s just like if you can capture something and convey

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that to someone to me then that’s that’s been a successful piece i think

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so this one would be one within the same series again this is uh

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hiking up at my head and if you can look at a little bit of the mountain in the

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background there that’s the same mountain as the one with the yellow sky before oh wonderful yeah

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yeah isn’t it down to the town to the hot springs it’s by the hot springs um it goes by

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the old hot springs right yeah yeah yeah not the killer one that goes up to

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ashley ashley ridge yeah i’ve done that in you’re too exhausted by the end take

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photograph [Laughter] but these three pieces actually are

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available they’re actually the same size and available as a triptych

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yes and i have to say i’m you know this might have been my

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favorite piece that i’ve done within the last couple of years i just i

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i think they turn out very successfully for what i was aiming to do so yeah i completely agree we have them

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in our rental and sales and um i’ve played with them a little bit on our our racks because we can you know

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change the heights and everything and i’ve put one lower one in the middle and one a little higher and that

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portrays that you know you’re climbing through a hit like a mountain side or you can vice versa or all the same and it it’s

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very playful and i think it is a really nice piece for a home because it just has that warmth that you you

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praying but uh that playfulness and adventure yeah and i would say the photographs

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that i took really don’t do justice so you know go on down and look in person people

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no i have been told but people have recommended perhaps uh get professional photographs

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done of your work and i think it would make you know a difference in this instance i i am really pleased with this

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particular yeah this is another one that i have done with along the same line

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just feeling like you’re stepping into the path you know yeah

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as well as this again this is up at mayette easy easy day drive from edmonton to

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maya so if i’m lacking an inspiration sometimes i’ll go for a day trip go for a hike

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i have actually stacks and stacks of photographs that i’ve taken over the years

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someday i may use them someday i may not i i did a painting that a lady purchased a few years ago i had

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that photograph for probably 25 years oh wow every so often i would look at it and like

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yeah i’m going to paint that don’t know when but i will paint it sometime and yeah when the time was right i guess yeah

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yeah wonderful have you ever used a combination of say a sky from one picture and the land

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from another picture or anything i think i may have tried

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say the same scene but but to kind of actually the one with the yellow sky was

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more than one photograph i did jig that one together slightly but not in the sense where you know i

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took this guy in calgary and i right yeah edmonton that would be a no-no definitely

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[Laughter] but speaking of fields yeah this is

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interesting for me because lately i’ve been doing a lot of prairie skates

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and it’s surprising to me because it never really appealed to me as a subject matter until recently skies

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were sometimes just the background you know they didn’t get my full attention as maybe the

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foreground or the under you know the wildflowers the undergrowth the things that i was trying to portray then but

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again like i said i like to try and do different things mix things up a little bit if i can so this

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is just a small piece that was kind of an early example towards that but again there’s

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you’re blue and you’re yellow again right your typical alberta

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and this one we do have a question from jeanette when you work off of photographs is it a

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standard four by six or do you print it in a larger format um four by six but sometimes like for

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instance the long narrow pieces that was a 4×6 photograph but i just cropped it to how

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i thought the composition would work from the photograph and then yeah i i went from there so

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sometimes you know the level of detail if i were to be a photorealistic artist

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it’s not really conducive to in that sense but now with the ipad you know if you want to zoom in you just double tap and oh

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that’s what that looks like so there’s a bit of advantage in that regard right

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right here here we have another lovely canola field and ending storm so i think we can relate to

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that this year that’s like a drive from calgary to

32:13

edmonton for sure yeah when you see it coming behind you and you’re like oh no

32:18

gotta get home and then right away you’re running away from the storm

32:26

again your canola field your storm this one is uh available at rental as

32:32

well it’s it’s been there for a little while yeah i enjoy this piece the texture of

32:37

the canola in in person is spot on it’s really nice yeah and i again

32:45

like i said when i had that influence of trying to use that brilliant blue i was given really expensive cobalt blue

32:51

paint as a christmas gift a few years ago some of this is like straight from the tube and i never do that

32:59

yeah very very rarely will i not mix something like like i showed you my palette it’s mixing with colors all the

33:04

time but i again i just wanted to see how that brilliant blue and it will tie in

33:10

with the the blues and the clouds there as well yeah so if i’m working all over on a piece i’m gonna put a

33:17

little bit of the blue up in the clouds and then i’m gonna put a little bit down in the foreground and i just keep working

33:24

you know layer by layer yeah until i get to do these uh lovely yellow bits

33:30

here which is the fun part as i call it you add the little bit of texture and

33:36

the highlight at the end and sometimes i’ll do uh try out subject

33:41

matter in a smaller format this is not not small but not really that large

33:48

and then i’ll carry it on with something like this which is going to be the piece behind me

33:53

today but i ended up selling it to someone one day

33:59

it’s very large it’s larger than what’s behind me and now i have to package it up and ship it that’s another project

34:06

for another day but yeah i like to test out that subject

34:12

matter with something smaller i i set myself the task of i’m gonna see

34:17

what i can do with you know a really larger one here and just convey the movement in the clouds and and the

34:23

fields so for a piece like this one how long did that that take you to

34:29

complete that’s a question i get asked quite a lot this one because it was large

34:35

took me typically when i work i like to work for two or three days not

34:42

uninterrupted but almost continuously i have my work for a couple hours in the morning and then i’ll work

34:47

in the afternoon go back the next day this maybe took between three and

34:55

four days like i do actually tend to work pretty quickly yeah but they said that pastel drawing

35:00

i’ve been working on it for a week and it’s not done and i’m like done by now

35:12

but yeah it’s uh i think if you can work quickly there’s a certain immediacy to the way you work as well

35:18

so yeah definitely

35:23

this one again is at art rental again it’s trying to push myself with

35:30

you know the sunset and how how colorful can i really make it without actually

35:36

having it be a bit too much this one i think it’s more or less successful

35:42

it’s it’s every time i look at it i’m kind of like is it too much is it not

35:47

you know well it’s different from your yellow skies and your right like

35:53

it’s different from what you’ve done before but it still has that sense of of you like i can feel that’s your piece

36:01

yeah yeah and like i said if if you’re going to be painting something it will

36:06

look like your work even if i think there’s a fair amount of variety in my application

36:13

and especially lately as i’ve been doing different different prairie scapes

36:21

i’ve kind of been working in the way that the piece just speaks to me but there’s still you know you’ve made

36:26

it with your hand therefore it’s going to look like your piece right if that makes sense

36:33

i thought i was doing a prairie series and i realized maybe i just like to paint hay bales because they’re not

36:39

burning but yeah just trying to capture the the

36:45

evening sunset light and the wispiness you know the clouds have flowed off in the sunsets and

36:51

yeah absolutely basically just to give people the feeling of

36:57

i know that place even if it might be not be the particular place you know i know the place i i i know

37:04

that feeling that place gives me kind of thing yeah this is the full image of the one

37:10

that’s behind me here whoa

37:16

and yeah just trying to convey again the changing the changing light the

37:23

typical alberta scene again where you see the storm in the background yeah absolutely

37:33

and again trying to work with i see so many people uh landscape

37:39

artists in particular that seem to work really well with purple in their shadows and i find it kind of a struggle for me

37:46

so here i’m trying to i’m always trying to add purple and i’m like i don’t know

37:52

the two purple is it too ready purple like you see there’s not much red in the work but

38:00

trying to emulate what i see yeah yeah it is quite recognizable though of the

38:07

sun behind that cloud and you know that different area that it hits and it just

38:12

gives off that different hue i think it’s gorgeous yeah oh thank you

38:18

and again the light breaking through there must be a theme going with the light coming through

38:23

and the blue the blue blue sky this was um one of my daughters lives up in

38:29

athabasca and it’s just a beautiful drive fairly short drive up there through what

38:35

i call the northern prairie it’s just a little bit different than say southern alberta or if you’re

38:40

driving between edmonton and calgary it’s just slightly different and here again they were just like these

38:47

clouds kind of scuttling across the sky the light just about to come through them yeah

38:52

there’s a particular spot on the road where you can look and uh you can see where there’s

38:58

trees it’s beautiful in the fall it’s not really i think there’s one later on that gives you kind of a sense of that

39:03

that has the yellow foliage in the fall

39:12

again another storm cloud another theme here this one you can see like i said

39:18

sometimes stylistically it’s a bit different because i had painted this

39:24

in a similar manner to the one previous just to me it didn’t look like it was

39:29

working it just looked like a big dark blob in the middle of the canvas

39:35

and i’m like well what can i do to try and maybe make this a little you know more visually interesting or

39:41

delineate what i was doing so this was one of those instances where it had actually pretty much dried

39:47

and then went back into it and i worked and i had adults kind of curly q lines in there

39:52

it’s very playful yeah it’s it’s i think it does convey a sense of

39:57

uh what i was trying to convey and actually in the lower left hand there there’s

40:02

this tiny little bit i don’t if you see it’s like a little ripple of black yellow

40:08

yeah that was purely accidental i just happened to step back and i went oh i like that i’m

40:13

not changing it kind of yeah i do as part of my practice when

40:19

i’m oil painting i always i don’t sit down to paint i am

40:24

always standing i’m always looking i’m always stepping back to look and to examine sometimes

40:31

i’ll turn around and not look for a couple minutes and then turn around and it’s like a first impression

40:37

so that does help you to identify maybe where there’s problem areas or areas where you’re not really

40:42

satisfied with the result and then the large one when you ask me

40:48

how long it took me to paint i actually had sore thigh muscles as i

40:54

was doing that because i keep like standing up and squatting down standing up and squatting down

41:00

to get the uh good exercise painting too

41:07

um this one is also currently in our rental again it’s a little bit different with the linear quality

41:13

yeah it’s horse thief canyon down by drum heller oh okay uh i think somebody actually

41:22

remarked that they were no it was a similar piece to that someone remarked that they recognized that uh

41:27

particular place as well but i do like the different just playing with the shapes in the foreground there on the different colors

41:34

yeah and try to get that purple down just right

41:39

it’s like my my nemesis is purple it’s your achilles heel my achilles heel

41:45

but i just keep plugging away i just want to keep working

41:50

this is actually an example of a photo reference that i would use right just to give you an idea sometimes

41:58

especially lately i’ve actually worked quite closely to what the

42:03

photograph looks like and sometimes it’s just an inspiration that’s kind of a jumping off

42:09

place for me to convey something so this is the photo reference

42:15

this is the resulting piece yeah and we were driving uh actually we were going highway 21 i

42:23

think it was we were going to cypress hills just the way the light was shifting the

42:28

clouds were shifting the hills were you know there was enough of a kind of a rolling quality of the hills where the shadow

42:35

they were in light they were in shadow it was just such a neat uh phenomenon and i really that’s what i

42:40

tried to capture this photograph maybe doesn’t give you that much of a sense but

42:48

i like yours better well that’s what it really looked like just you know whatever

42:56

well and just another question for you um how does your mood affect

43:02

how you’re painting and what colors you’re using and say you take that piece that picture that you took and you go to

43:09

paint and all of a sudden you’re you know really upset do you use those darker purples do you have those harsher

43:16

lines or do you still want to find that airiness that that photo had or

43:22

i don’t think my mood really ever affects me in that way right but the process of painting

43:30

if i am in a bad mood or you know something in the world is bothering me

43:35

like what we’re all experiencing lately it really does honestly take me away from anything like

43:42

that when you’re when i’m painting anyway i find that i am concentrating on that

43:47

and pretty much only that exclusively and i might usually when i start a piece

43:54

i’ll think about it beforehand i’ll look at the photograph i’ll think what would what would be successful for

44:01

this and how do i really want to convey this so i will have that plan in the back of my head right sometimes it’ll it’ll come

44:07

to fruition a little better than others as far as the plan i think this one this is actually the last piece that

44:14

i’ve completed it’s not the last one in the presentation but it seemed to go with the previous one i think this

44:22

maybe came pretty close to the conception that i had in my in my head so perhaps i’m getting

44:28

somewhere after all he’s here here’s the one i was talking about um

44:35

with the with the the drive to athabasca and the yellow yeah yeah and then again i’m trying to

44:42

use that deep like the deep tom thompson blue yeah this guy there i i find it’s

44:47

pretty effective yeah absolutely you can really see that depth yep yeah yeah yeah i

44:54

i always am kind of like struggling how far do you push it do you push it even further

45:00

is it too much like the one with the sunset is it too much it it depends and it’s nice because yeah

45:07

different people view art in a different way some may appeal to some and others

45:12

may may like something like this this is kind of interesting uh as far as your

45:18

previous question to do with mood yeah i painted this the second week of march this year which was

45:26

just when coleman really really starting to come in on the news i had some days off yeah and i was like i’m just gonna

45:34

paint something calm i’m just getting a little bit more muted palette and it just had a calming it probably

45:39

had a calming effect on me and i think when you look at it it’s a fairly calming piece

45:45

absolutely it’s so like you know if i’m at the end of my hard work day it’s like

45:53

if i’m at the end of working like the sunset and this is the piece after

45:58

you’ve done your your uh your work for the day or whatever you’ve gone through during the day this is just

46:04

meant to yeah calm you it’s called serenity

46:13

this is another example of a photo reference from southern alberta as you can tell no

46:18

trees yeah and this one was done

46:24

right after the previous one and as you can see it’s pretty close in this instance to the photo reference

46:32

right and i started thinking about it after the fact like i started to use a way smaller brush than i usually

46:38

do sorry just minimize myself here we can see often the

46:43

far distance on the right there that’s actually not a very much smaller

46:49

brush than i usually use just to try and get that detail yeah i started reflecting on it later on and i

46:56

was thinking maybe i just wanted that extra level of

47:01

concentration that i needed to just even take even more out of myself because yeah it was quite

47:08

quite uh an interesting thing i don’t know which i prefer i i

47:17

i can’t i can’t choose you know one over the other i can only choose what i feel like doing

47:23

at the moment and again same kind of same kind of

47:29

theme hay bales blue sky done in quite i think a fairly quote unquote realistic

47:36

manner this particular one but again just just your typical alberta scene

47:45

i didn’t realize i didn’t realize it related so much to the prairies but i’ve lived here i lived in alberta my

47:51

whole life um my father is from a farming background

47:56

there’s other farming connections with myself so it’s obviously something that’s

48:03

important to me is hiking in the woods is

48:12

last last photo reference here this is um again while driving just

48:20

when the sun is about to set and it’s almost like they do or the the fog is kind of settling over

48:26

the ground again that’s that’s how i tried to

48:32

convey that particular feeling but they’re uh like i say

48:37

they’re quite different this last i call them you know a prairie series they are about the prairie but they’re

48:44

quite different in a lot of the different ways so

48:50

i don’t know if that’s a comment on my moods or i’d like that i do i do always want to

48:57

try and challenge myself right yeah in various ways

49:02

within the landscape you know so for this piece here um

49:10

can you give me like us like a a timeline of you know what went down

49:16

first what they’ll went second and you know how did you work in those highlights of the sun

49:22

and again i almost always start with the sky and kind of work my

49:27

way down right ninja basically from top to bottom like i probably put a little bit of the

49:34

blue down by where the hay bales are i don’t

49:39

really draw the image i i will make a few marks as far as here’s the horizon going to be with a

49:45

pencil prior to that just basically a few guidelines of where things are going to be

49:51

but i don’t make any kind of detailed drawing prior to doing the piece right so if i have those marks like i

49:57

probably made a mark where the hay bale was so i put a little bit of blue in there and then i you know

50:02

just gradually would build it up with whatever color right well i i got actually the result and then always like

50:10

probably the um the little lighter bit right by the horizon there

50:15

indicate fog i would add that later and all the little highlights and the small details and the

50:21

thicker paint later like i call the the fun part yeah you see everything

50:27

coming together in that time yeah yeah yeah so i yeah i call it the fun part because

50:35

it is challenging it is work but ultimately it’s also enjoyable for me it’s

50:42

yeah it’s what i do yeah wonderful i have another question for you

50:49

um it’s a good one

50:56

how have you continued to develop your career considering the fast-paced technological

51:03

trends well i’m a bit late to uh

51:08

online world i post things on instagram i just

51:14

with the help of my daughter uh launched a website this fall i need to do it for

51:22

literally years and because of certain circumstances she was able to help

51:28

out with it with here so it’s a really good resource for people who are

51:34

interested in your work and of course everybody looks online and everything now so yeah

51:40

yeah yeah well especially in this time when necessarily going out and seeing

51:45

something in person might not be available to some folks having that website and having that

51:51

you know instagram page or whatever it is to to initially have that connection with you um barely after i

51:58

graduated i was fairly active as far as trying to get out there and get my work

52:04

shown in various venues etc for a period of years i was for a few

52:09

different reasons a little bit um not as engaged with my art career but within the last five

52:15

years or so i’ve i’ve been doing more work showing a little bit where i could

52:20

and right now i haven’t really tried to apply anywhere because i don’t know if

52:26

a if you’re accepted right line b will it actually occur right so things are a bit up in the air

52:32

for everybody right now but art rental has been like a constant for me and i’m

52:37

really appreciative of you guys like you’ve been good support over the years yeah awesome well it’s really nice to

52:43

have your because we have our all of our inventories on our website right so you know if somebody really enjoyed

52:50

the pieces that they’ve seen through whatever kind of social media or have seen it at a friend’s house or whatever

52:57

and they can go and and look up what we have of yours and then they can book an appointment and come see it in

53:03

person so that’s that extra step to allow them to see it especially

53:08

in this time yeah and if you if you do go to my website and there is a piece that you guys have at art rental it’ll

53:15

take you directly via a link to the art rental site so yeah yeah all the information will be

53:21

there and where you go and so if anybody has any questions in the audience feel

53:28

free to type them up we’re just about reaching the end of the event but i do have another question for marilla as

53:33

well for any emerging artists who are watching do you have any words of advice or

53:40

encouragement during this time during this time

53:46

specifically i don’t think so but in general just do what you love to do do it

53:52

because you love it i mean some people definitely are really good at marketing themselves

53:59

some people are really successful with uh online marketing and things of that nature

54:05

and not to take away from them i think that’s great but i think number one piece of advice i would

54:10

give is do it because you love it yeah absolutely

54:17

that’s wonderful thanks marla awesome um thank you all so much for

54:22

joining us today it was really an honor to uh watch marla’s presentation and take

54:29

in all those wonderful landscapes and and get that feel for your artistic practice

54:34

we’re really appreciative to have you a part of art rental and we’re excited to see what’s next and and

54:40

what else you create and um yeah there will be a pastel drawing at some

54:46

point [Music] i’ll send you a picture uh directly so

54:52

you can progress pics [Laughter]

54:58

all right well just to wrap up again thank you all so much for joining us today the aga team continues to work hard to

55:04

bring you art creative projects to do at home and engage with you daily we look forward to seeing you at the gallery

55:10

and in art rental and sales we’re definitely ready for you and you’re ready to come see us

55:15

to view the work of marla sholey that you can rent or purchase on your own collect for your own collection

55:21

again like i mentioned earlier just visit our rentals and sales or check out the inventory online at

55:27

uraga.ca and then if you have any further questions for our team feel free to send over an email to art rental your aga.ca

55:36

thank you so much folks until next time stay safe stay curious and stay connected with us marla

55:43

bye bye

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