Sunday Spotlight - Kathy Bradshaw

Northern Bog

oil on canvas

© Kathy Bradshaw

It is my great pleasure to take the spotlight and shine it directly on local Saskatoon artist, Kathy Bradshaw.

Kathy is a superb and expressive landscape painter who strikes me as a life-long learner. In the first part of her high school teaching career she taught English and Physical Education. After school hours I suspect she was like many of us, busy with children and family but she would squeeze in time to draw. In 2004-05 Kathy took an educational leave from her job and pursued her B.F.A. at the University of Saskatchewan. It was at this time that she began to realize her dream of becoming an artist. While at university she fell hopelessly in love with painting and completed all four levels in just fifteen months. With her B.F.A. in hand she returned to her career, but this time in the role of art teacher at a new collegiate in town. She says,

 "As I move into my final years of teaching, I am extremely thankful that I am able to share my passion for art-making with my students".

And that sums up how I see Kathy: as an educator and a person passionately interested in growing and learning as much as she can and then sharing that information and discovery with others, whether it be her students or her colleagues. I met Kathy at, you guessed it, the Emma Lake Kenderdine Campus during a week-long class in 2010. I have vivid memories of her talking about working in encaustic, which I didn't know much about at all. I recall her inviting me to come and watch her work sometime during the week. Being extremely curious, I absolutely took her up on the offer. One beautiful, calm, sunny day I saw her table set up outside of the main studio building so I wandered over to see her at work. She was layering, scraping, colouring and dripping wax- turning it into a beautiful landscape painting. It was mesmerizing!

images © Nicki Ault

 

Her muffin tin of coloured wax sat melting on a hot griddle and I had never seen anything like it before! Kathy explained that one of the classes she took while working on her B.F.A. was called "Hands on History" (with professor Paul Hamilton). The focus of the class was to research an ancient medium, create it from scratch and then reproduce an artifact from the time period using that medium. She chose encaustic because she had seen a painting once and had instantly fallen in love with its mysterious quality. She thought to herself that someday she would be doing that. For her research project she created a life-sized Egyptian mummy, wrote a research paper and presented her work. The rest is HER history... she has been painting in encaustic ever since. Please enjoy this small sampling of some of Kathy's original encaustic work:

Artists' Conk
encaustic

© Kathy Bradshaw

Thinking It Through
 encaustic

© Kathy Bradshaw

Road To Somewhere
 encaustic

© Kathy Bradshaw

Woman Fixing Hair
encaustic

© Kathy Bradshaw

Kathy's talent does not stop there. She is a beautiful oil painter, as you can see in the first image at the top of this post and the images below. I can't get enough of looking at "Northern Bog"! It might be my absolute favorite "Kathy Bradshaw". I feel transported when I look at it- it takes me north to the land that I love; I can smell the earthy forest and wet bog-land, I know that pale gray/blue sky that is reflected in the water and I love how she has brought out the soft corals and oranges that you see in fallen, water-logged leaves.

Hydrangeas in Blue Jar
oil on canvas
© Kathy Bradshaw

Kathy's growth over the last decade can be attributed to her dedication to her craft and the learning moments she has experienced with accomplished Saskatchewan painters such as: Bob Christie, George Glenn, Iris Hauser, Graham Fowler, Clint Hunker, Ward Schell and David Alexander. Last year Kathy was awarded a CARFAC mentor-ship and began working alongside established landscape painter, Clint Hunker, in September 2012. During this time she feels has made measurable gains in her sense of composition, use of colour and skill at mark-making. Influence comes in all shapes and sizes. For all of the inspiration and influence she has garnered from these extraordinary people, Kathy feels she also must acknowledge a place. She writes,

"I would be remiss if I didn’t mention a very special place for I also owe much of my artistic growth and love for plein air landscape painting to the Emma Lake Kenderdine Campus…a world-renowned artist retreat that has been recently and so shortsightedly closed."

Obviously I am in complete agreement with her, as are so many artists who have made enormous strides due to their time at this magical site. I fully imagine it to be open again and I envision Kathy teaching encaustic workshops on Kenderdine's historic grounds; back in the forest with her muffin tins of wax and and full class of participants wanting to learn from her!

Smell The Roses

oil on canvas

© Kathy Bradshaw

Roses on Red Chair

oil on canvas

© Kathy Bradshaw

Artist Statement:

"Although I work with a range of subject matters, I am most passionate about depicting the solitude, strength and beauty within prairie and northern boreal forest landscapes, a love no doubt cultured by several summers spent at Kenderdine.  My works are largely explorations in colour, texture and space and are created with oils, encaustic, various drawing media and collage.  Using a layering process allows me to imply a history, relay a sense of mystery and establish a mood.  With each work, I strive to convey the presence of the space before me and the character of the forms within that space.  I am also fascinated with the effects of light and feed on the challenge of expressing this in my work." 

 image © Kathy Bradshaw

Kathy working in the studio at the Emma Lake Kenderdine Campus

Kathy's oil and encaustic work is represented by the Nouveau Gallery in Regina, The Black Spruce Gallery in Christopher Lake and the Stall Gallery and Modern Country Interiors in Saskatoon.

To learn more about Kathy and her work please visit:

www.kathybradshawart.com

In The Thick of the Thicket

In The Thick of the Thicket

36 x 36"

oil on canvas
© Nicki Ault, 2012

This is one of the large paintings I did for my show "Prairie Love" at Calories. The front section of the restaurant has a rather high ceiling, so large canvases work well in this area. It was a pleasant surprise to realize that the direction of the sun coming in the front window was the same as the light in this painting. I have to say this was a difficult painting, partly because it has a lot going on (which is why I made resting places of the distant field and sky), but also I struggled with whether or not to keep the dead branches in the front. After a bit of contemplation I realized I wanted the viewer to feel like they were in amongst the grasses, really up close and personal, so I kept them in. Initially all of the branches were coming off the front of the picture plane and it created a bit of a wall. As soon as I pushed them back into the grass at varying distances it started working better. Each painting is an education and I love the process of working through it all!

As an aside, I'm pretty excited because I bought a piece of original art for myself at local gallery/art supply the other day. I saw it before I went to Emma Lake and couldn't stop thinking about it the whole time. I decided when I got home that if it was still available I would purchase it as a gift to myself for my birthday... and happily it was! Yay! The bonus was that as I looked around the gallery one of the owners, who I recognized, asked if I needed help. I pushed aside my shyness and somehow mustered up the courage to say more than "I'm just looking". Who was it? It was my first and only studio art professor from university, Bob Christie!!! I didn't expect him to recognize me, after all, that was a long time ago, but never-the-less when I told him he had once taught me, he pretty much stopped everything and chatted for half an hour! It was fantastic! I felt like a sponge trying to absorb any art talk he was willing to share and I, in turn, let him know the lessons he gave that really stuck with me. It gave me the itch to go to art school! And I have never felt like a parking ticket was so worth it before!!! :)

Shout Out To Degen

I have loved art my entire life. I remember winning a newsprint pad with Grover on it for some art I did in grade one. Then in grade three I remember winning another contest at school and my picture was made into Christmas cards. In grade eight one of my drawings won an honourable mention and I was given a plaque with my art scanned onto it. In high school I took art in grade nine and then signed up for typing in grade ten. The art teacher asked me to join him for a meeting with the principal and they talked me into continuing with art--- hence it takes me a long time to type up these posts! I won the art award at grade twelve graduation. I began University with the plan of taking Fine Arts and really enjoyed my first studio class with Bob Christie, painting in oils (the only time I ever have). In second year I was so intimidated by the Professor, Otto Rogers, and the class that I didn't go back after the first day. I switched to Sociology and didn't take another studio class again, but I kept up with art history. What can I say, I was young and silly. Now I know I could have gained some valuable experience in that class and maybe not lost so much time. Who knows?

In my early twenties I actually got into making porcelain dolls. I won a few local contests and had them in a northern Saskatchewan gallery for a few seasons. Then I got busy with my career and life and didn't do much for years. Turning thirty was hard for me, but from it I decided I didn't want to turn forty or sixty or eighty and regret not pursuing things I loved. So that fall I registered for a Life Drawing class with Degen Lindner. I was so curious to meet her because my grandmother had a large watercolour painting done by her father, Ernest Lindner, and I stared at it in her living room every time I visited her. Degen was wonderful and encouraging from the very first class. I remember the feeling of excitement when I left that first night and vowed to myself that I would never allow myself to let art go again. I have taken many Life Drawing night classes with Degen over the years and also taken 4 painting workshops with her at Emma Lake. She has been positive and encouraging all the way. She is so talented and has such an eye for art of all kinds. I swear every time I have made the changes she has suggested the work is always better. And she has a way of finding something positive no matter what. She is amazing to see in a class teaching and guiding her students...and a wonderful sense of humour to go with all her knowledge... and listening to her talk about the history of her father and other artists is like a precious gift. I have learned so much from her.

After I had my baby in 2002 I slowly let art begin to slip away. Then after my second baby I was so sleep deprived I was just trying to survive each day. She saw I was struggling and asked if I would take care of her plants at the studio while she was at the lake for the summer (2006) and said I could use her space if I liked. How generous is that? And then when she got home in the fall she offered to let me continue sharing the space. Now I am about to get my own space in December and when I told her my plan she was once again extremely supportive. She said it was the right thing for me to do and that I needed my own space because she could see I was getting more serious. You know how they say that there are something like seven people in everyone's life that make such a difference (good or bad) that your life is forever changed by knowing them? Well, she is one of my seven.... and my life has definitely changed for the better by knowing her.

Today I have posted two sketches I did in Degen's Life Drawing classes. Each drawing took about 2 1/2 hours.