Carol O’Grady-Miclash will have her work featured for the month of May at the Showcase Gallery in the South Cariboo Business Centre at 475 Birch Ave.
O’Grady-Miclash grew up in Ontario moved to British Columbia in the mid-’60s. She purchased property in the Green Lake area in 1980 and started to spend holidays in the Cariboo before moving to the area permanently in the early ’90.
O’Grady-Miclash says she was interested in art as a young child. Not having access to many art tools, she began her journey with drawings in pencil, as she only had access to a pencil and a sharpener to create her first pieces of artwork.
She began to get interested in painting when she viewed the works done by the Group of Seven, a group of seven men from Ontario from the 1920s that created amazing works in oils of Lake Superior and other Ontario landscapes, where she was born and raised.
Their unique style inspired O’Grady-Miclash to pick up the paintbrush. She got more involved when her house was cleared after raising her children, and then she began to plunge into her art.
Beginning with water colours, she had a short stint in oils, before transitioning into acrylics that she paints on a heavy watercolour paper. Painting for about 15 years, with her subjects varied and ranging from flora and fauna to scenes of the places she has travelled to, as well as the many happenings in her backyard at Green Lake.
O’Grady-Miclash also takes her paints and canvasses along with her on her travels abroad.
On occasion, she paints plain air (in the great outdoors). The Green Lake resident begins her project there, and then moves to the photographs she has taken, where she adapts her compositions to her liking.
She has won numerous awards for her pieces that she’s entered in Cariboo Artist Guild shows.
Her newest pieces will be part of the annual group display of works at the Parkside Art Gallery at the end of July and first part of August. She asks the people in the area to continue to support our many talented and creative Cariboo artists.
O’Grady-Miclash’s works can be viewed at the Showcase until the end of May.
