CarlaWeaver

I was raised in Saskatchewan in a small farming community, where I loved to be outdoors all summer and hated the cold winters. As a child I loved to draw, but as I grew up, I got away from my art. After receiving my business degree from the University of Saskatchewan in 1973, I moved west to Calgary for approximately 10 years. Since then, I have lived in Toronto, Vancouver, the Cowichan Valley, Delta, White Rock, and Mexico, and I travel as often as I can. I now make my home base Parksville, spending the winters in Puerto Vallarta.

It was while I was living in Toronto in the mid 80’s that I decided to reacquaint myself with drawing and enrolled in a drawing class at The Royal Ontario Museum. My creative spirit was reawakened, and I continued to study art at the Alberta College of Art, Emily Carr College of Art and Design and UBC. In 1991, I received my BA in Fine Art from UBC, and my Master of Arts in 1993.

Since 1988, I have painted as much as possible. In the beginning, my work was almost always in oil. While I particularly love the luminosity and feel of working with oil and am attracted to the intensity of colour that can be achieved with oils, most recently I have been experimenting with acrylics and mixed media, which I find more flexible for abstract painting.

I endeavor to capture the feeling of the moment. Whether my painting is a landscape, a still life, or an abstract, I paint the feeling or mood of the place, the still life arrangement, or the abstract concept. For me, painting is about expressing some principle, emotion, idea or concept visually. Therefore, my work is never highly realistic, but always a little abstract, a little imperfect, just as I am.

My representational work reflects my prairie upbringing and my yen for travel. I choose subjects such as prairie landscapes, scenes depicting Mexican architecture and culture, flowers from gardens in British Columbia, still life or subjects from home or my travel. My abstract paintings reflect my journey along my spiritual path.

One of the artists who has most influenced my work is Wassily Kandinsky. He believed that literature, music and art were the best vehicles by which to communicate the spiritual, and that art must be an expression of the inner need of the artist and should touch the soul of the viewer/listener. Add to this influence, what I have learned from several semi abstract painters from whom I have recently taken workshops, and I am moved to paint abstract and semi abstract paintings that are inspired from within. By starting with 3 colors abstractly applied to a canvas, it is exciting to see what emerges from the images by working with mixed media and collage.

As it has been my lifelong journey to unleash my creative spirit, I developed a two-day workshop entitled “Express Your Creative Spirit,” which I offer to support others on their creative journeys. And, as a reference for my representational painting, I started to take photographs, and I sell my photos on a series of cards. My photos are usually of British Columbia gardens and flowers, or from my travels. Cards and prints of my paintings are available on my website.