Carol O’Grady-Miclash smiles and holds up a framed, green outdoor picture of Moose Point Drive at Watch Lake, one of the many lush, inviting scenes of the Cariboo she’s captured with a paint brush in recent years.
The Green Lake resident is the featured artist this month at Showcase Gallery in 100 Mile House, located on the main floor of the South Cariboo Business Centre at 475 Birch Ave.
Her work will be on display until the end of June.
O’Grady-Miclash, whose love of the visual arts goes back to her childhood, started painting in 1995 after many years of “wishful thinking.”
She says the famed Group of Seven, renowned Canadian landscape painters from the 1920-1930s, are a major source of inspiration.
“They were awesome. The trees, the wilderness, that’s what they painted. They didn’t do naked ladies and stuff like that, or chairs and tables. They did beautiful, outstanding landscapes.”
While mostly in a familiar setting, she does capture a variety of subject matter in her own work, because, after all, “you can’t do the same thing over and over.”
She has been a member of the Cariboo Artists’ Guild for several years and has participated in the local group’s annual Art Show in 100 Mile House. She’s sold paintings in British Columbia, Ontario, California and Mexico.
Along with her husband, Laurie, she likes to winter in California and Mexico. But, originally being from northern Ontario, northern climates like the Cariboo’s, where the couple have been residing since the early 1990s, are where she and her husband feel most comfortable.
“It makes my husband happy. He can go fishing and do stuff like that.”
And she can paint.
“That’s where I get my inspiration.”
