Sharilee Golob loves birds, and she has found that watercolour is a perfect medium for bringing the jays, woodpeckers and eagles she sees to life on a canvas.
Golob is sharing her love and passion for birds and nature with a solo show of her watercolour paintings this month at the Quesnel Art Gallery. “Catching a Flutter of Nature” is the gallery’s first show of 2020, and it opens Friday, Jan. 10.
“I’ve always loved animals and birds and nature and loved to draw as a kid,” Golob said Wednesday, as she was hanging her pieces on the gallery’s walls.
Golob took art in high school but stopped painting for a while as an adult.
In 2006, she took a watercolour course in her community in Nazko.
“As soon as I did that, I was back to painting,” she said. “I didn’t do it for a lot of years when my kids were little. I started from there with watercolour.”
One thing Golob really likes about watercolour is that she is always learning because it’s always different.
“I really enjoy the vibrancy of the colour and just playing with the colours as it moves about the paper and creates the images I want,” she said. “It seems to suit me. I love the vibrancy of it because you can actually get the vibrant colour of the bids. It brings them to life, the vibrancy you can get. I think that’s what really pulled me to watercolour, and when you put the colours together, they almost make their own colour on their own. It’s just beautiful. So it’s really fun to do.”
Golob is showing about 28 of her paintings, which represent several years of her work.
“I basically chose the paintings that really spoke to me and inspired me when I was painting them, if they were ones that just grabbed me and wanted to be painted,” she said. “It always turns out to be mostly birds because I’m very much a bird person.”
This is Golob’s first exhibition, and she says she is feeling “excited and nervous at the same time.”
“I didn’t think it would ever happen,” she said. “It’s pretty cool.”
Golob hopes showing her paintings will inspire others to see the beauty she sees in nature.
“I have a real interest in nature and birds, and I thought it would be a good way to encourage and maybe open people’s eyes to the wonder of our natural world and possibly just encourage that we need to care for it a little more so in the future, we still have birds to look at,” she said. “We’re already looking at numbers decreasing, and the environment around us is changing so drastically.
“When I paint something, I’m hoping, first that I’m being impressed by what I’m painting, whether it’s the colour of the water or the creature, and then I’m hoping that others can see that wonder and the beauty in nature — to find beauty in the small things too, sometimes.”
Most of the paintings in this show are from Golob’s Nazko backyard and community.
“I have one that’s Stewart, B.C. — for me, the one in Stewart, the colour of the water just drew me — but most of it is around my backyard, birds from my feeders and the snow falling around,” she said. “I think most of the art that you see in there will be something that someone has seen, they’ll recognize a bird.”
The Show Opening for “Catching a Flutter of Nature” is Friday, Jan. 10 from 7-9 p.m. at the Quesnel Art Gallery inside the Quesnel Arts and Recreation Centre at 500 North Star Rd.
The show, which is sponsored by Cariboo Pulp and Paper Company, runs until Jan. 31, and Golob’s paintings can be viewed on the gallery walls Tuesday to Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
The Quesnel Art Gallery has released its 2020 show schedule, and following Golob’s show, the next exhibition is Art From the Heart “Cold Days — Warm Hearts,” which runs from Feb. 12 to March 6.
For more information about the Quesnel Art Gallery and Gift Shop, visit quesnelartgallery.com, phone 250-991-4014 or email quesnelartgallery@gmail.com.
READ MORE: Thursday Artists and guests share their joy in next Quesnel Art Gallery exhibition
editor@quesnelobserver.com
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