Artist Cat Fink has spent a good deal of her artistic career cracking open her own avenue to creativity which she exuberantly shares with smiles and laughter.
She helps others to find their creative way both as a teacher for School District 27, and as a workshop leader.
She will be teaching a creative art course for teachers at this Friday’s professional development day.
She has also taught courses for the Central Cariboo Arts and Culture Society on building an artist’s portfolio and creating artist grant proposals and serves as a director on the society’s board.
Last year Fink also taught an eight-week course at TRU called Cracking Open Your Creativity.
Her willingness to delve deep into her own psyche to create art is clearly evident in her show at the Station House Gallery this month called Coyotes, Cheshires, Angels, and Other Complications.
A mixed media collection with lots of subtle mixed messages, Fink has used pastels, charcoal, graphite, coloured pencils, and acrylic paints on watercolour and printer’s paper to create the collection. And she writes the original texts that appear on her drawings.
Over the years Fink has spent considerable effort finding ways to express her artistic vision, including returning to art school at age 37.
In her artist’s biography Fink says her inspiration and subject choices grow from questions about her life and experiences; from her Tibetan Buddhist practice; and from her multi-centred family heritage of Scandinavian, French Canadian, and Métis.
She is also inspired by one of her heroes, Albert Einstein, who asked if we live in a friendly universe or a hostile universe.
“Well, I believe in Coyote Tricksters (fun), Cheshire Cats (wise play), Angels (love and spirit),” Fink says in her artists statement.
“Yes, I believe in a friendly universe. Not only believe it. I choose it. I choose fun, wisdom, play, love, spirit. That’s my Trickster recipe for life.”
She says the coyote started appearing in her art when she saw them while living in the Chilcotin for a while.
“Coyote is the Trickster I know best,” Fink writes. “In her stories she can be subtle and surprising, teasing and outrageous, serious and utterly compassionate, a magician, a clown, a healer, a foolish creator of great beauty.
“She shows us where we have been, where we don’t want to be anymore, and where we need to go. She is wise in a very crazy way.”
In her studies she also learned that Tibetans have a long tradition of teachers who are “yeshe cholwa”— wisdom crazy.
“Crazy wisdom is full of contradictions. It is in fact a perfect mirror of life. It is life and its contradictions that inspire my drawings. Take, for instance, my drawing “Old Coyote Trick (standing out).
“Sometimes the thing that is strongest in us is the thing that breaks us. That is definitely crazy, but understanding that craziness brings us wisdom.”
She says she starts most things in her life including art projects by asking asking what she loves, what delights her, makes her smile, makes her laugh.
And most of the time what comes is joyful, loving, healing drawing.
In her presentation at the gallery opening earlier this month she talked about how the coyote started to appear in her paintings after spending time in the Chilcotin and the relationship between artists and the coyote as the First Nations Trickster.
Lately she says her inspiration comes in around 3 a.m.
“I can always nap later.”
Besides artist, storyteller and shapeshifter, Cat describes herself as a mom, wife, aunt, sister, daughter, writer, art teacher, fibre artist and coyote-tailed Crow Girl.
Fink shows her work in solo and group exhibitions around the province and has won numerous awards for her work as well as several grants to further her own education in the arts.