Fernie Art

I am a Fernie based illustrator and aspiring ski bum. I draw a lot of maps and also create illustrations for magazines, universities, advertising, food packaging, murals and books. My illustrations are usually silly and whimsical, but I also draw more serious conceptual illustrations for newspapers...

For as long as I can remember, I wanted to be an artist. I spent many hours of my childhood creating, drawing and imagining. So it was not surprising that I ended up studying visual art at Simon Fraser University (SFU) soon after leaving high school. I have always been primarily a painter but have experimented with everything from inks to acrylic paints, airbrushing to oil paints, mixed media installations to ceramics.

“We have so many apparent differences: a dancer and a writer, a city person and a rural person – yet the mixed media of our presentation derives from the much more powerful, but perhaps less visible, similarities,” Jon Turk wrote to me on first discussing this feature. I was surprised to learn of his newest endeavour – Synchronicity and the Sacred Space.

I love to paint. Often a dream of my next piece wakes me from deep sleep and I quickly arise and put on a pot of coffee (usually around 4 am). It is my time, my peace, my quiet, and my vision is clear. Fascinated with both the sciences and the fine arts, choosing my career path was challenging but I opted to do a Bachelor of Science in nursing, which in my mind is an elegant mix of the arts and sciences. After having three beautiful girls within a four-year span, I have been blessed to work very casually as a RN, but admit to needing a creative outlet - some mental reprieve.