Nature lover and self taught artist Cindy Wickingstad has returned to the Showcase Gallery this month.
Wickingstad has collected just under a dozen paintings for her new show Painted Perspectives. It features a wide selection of her art from the last several years which she feels gives a general overview of her work as an artist.
"Art is such a wonderful hobby, especially in combination with my love of nature and travel," Wickingstad remarked. "I have thousands of photos. It gives me some basis to start and it goes from there."
For Wickingstad creating art is a love she discovered in adulthood. Growing up as a child she'd had an interest in it but it wasn't until she became an adult and she started going to art galleries she was inspired to try it herself.
While her initial work was rough, Wickingstad persevered one painting at a time. She came to enjoying using her own photographs as basis for her works using photographs from hikes, trips and daily life as inspiration.
"I don't always enjoy it, there is the word pain in painting. It's difficult sometimes but I'm always learning," Wickingstad remarked. "I used to think colour trumped everything else in a painting, but now I'm learning that value and colour harmony in a painting trumps anything. It's important to take risks in your art work and not stay in a rut or a groove."
One of Wickingstad's favourite paintings in Painted Perspectives her painting entitled Maligne Lake, Jasper. She frequently goes hiking in Jasper and based the painting on a photograph she took on the Bald Hills Trail a few years back. The recent wildfires in Jasper National Park, which burned a third of the town last month, have made the painting all the more important as she doesn't know if the view she based it on still exists.
Another favourite is Market Day in Cusco which is based off a photo she took in Peru. Wickingstad noted she loves visiting places that haven't been Americanized and she tried to capture that local culture in her painting.
She noted that in the coming months, she's excited to start painting a whole new selection of paintings based on a recent trip to Guatemala. Wickingstad said she has some great photos she can't wait to use as a basis for her next works of art.
"I'm really excited to go back to my photos and paint some of the scenes I saw there, it's so colourful," Wickingstad remarked. "What keeps me happy and moving is to be creative. I keep going back into the studio to get the perfect painting but you never can find it, it's elusive."
