Gladys Wheatley has been doing art since she was a child but this year her paintings hanging at the Cariboo Dental Clinic during Art Walk and Sale have a fresh new excitement to them.
“I love to do all kinds of art and I have broken out of the box this year,” Wheatley says in her biography.
“I am no longer restricted to anything. I’ll do what my muse tells me and gladly follow it because it makes me happy and this is the point of art, at least I think so.”
Wheatley says she started making art when she was living at a cow camp out at West Branch in the Chilcotin.
There were no art supplies so she used a section of wood and some charcoal from the wood cook stove to create sketches of old buildings from around the area.
At the cow camp she met Tom Bugg who helicoptered in one day and took one of her drawings back to show his wife, the late potter and artist Barb Bugg.
Later when she moved in to Williams Lake Wheatley says she was encouraged by Barb to join the Cariboo Art Society.
“With the friendship I found there I continued taking courses in watercolour, acrylics and printmaking.”
More than 70 artists have teamed up with 54 businesses to bring the 2015 Art Walk and Sale to Williams Lake Aug. 7 to Sept. 12.
Art Walk booklets are available at the participating businesses hosting individual and in some cases groups of local and visiting artists.
The exhibition has expanded this year to include the work of artists from as far away as Logan Lake, Nicola Valley, and Pritchard.
Expect to see paintings in watercolour, oils, acrylics, pottery, photography, glass art, quilting, wood carving, graphic arts, and more on this year’s art walk.