This article submitted (and published with only one photo) to Watchman
July 28th, 2005.
Sheila
Watson
has been an artist since the early 1980s. She first majored in physical
education, worked as a Phys-Ed teacher, then moved on to obtain a fine
arts degree from the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM)
specialising in painting and silk screening. She made illustrations for
books on sports psychology, as well as short stories and poetry. Sheila
also sculpts in ceramics and makes exquisite pottery objects. In her
words, it is “like an addiction” with her. When I visited her studio in
April, she was busy preparing ceramics pieces glazed and fired in
various techniques, for both, the 1001 pots festival, which is
now taking place in Val David, and the annual Route des Arts,
a 9-day art celebration in the greater Argenteuil region from July 30th
to August 7th from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Upon
entering her studio, one is greeted by a beautiful gallery of paintings
and ceramic sculptures, leading to her workshop with shelves full of
ceramics in different stages of production. Her large scale impressive
paintings depict studies of tree trunks and branches suggesting human
bodies in movement. Her beautiful new paintings of plants and flowers
were inspired by a recent trip to South America. In her ceramics, she
uses the human form draped around, either applied over the object or
engraved onto it. Sheila’s art is intriguing. Her immobile trees are
alive with dancing movement and her inert pottery encapsulates
expressive faces and capture choreographed human shapes. A visit to
this creative, talented artist studio is indeed an enriching
experience.
Visit Sheila's Web Page:
http://www.studiosheila.com/
