From designing and manufacturing teddy bears to painting elephants, artist Reta Munro hasn’t been afraid to pursue interests a little outside of the box.
Currently, the 108 Mile Ranch resident has been focusing her creative attention on painting and she has some of her best work on display at Showcase Gallery from Feb. 6 to March 4.
She favours oil paints and dabbles in watercolour, pastel and pencil drawing, defining herself as a realist painter. It comes from the detail she demands of herself in painting her preferred subject – animals.
Reta began as a landscape artist and discovered her talent with animals quite by accident, when her daughter asked her to paint an elephant as a piece for a missionary auction.
“I told her I didn’t know how, and prayed to the Lord to help me paint an elephant. When it was done, I thought it was beautiful. Just getting started was hard.”
Having found a niche, she dove deeper into the animal kingdom and developed somewhat of a passion.
The self-taught artist says she has always enjoyed drawing and painting and learned much of what she knows from books, workshops, television programs and an online drawing course.
“You can learn a lot online if you do your homework and practise.”
A still life workshop taught her some basic skills, which she’s carried into all of her paintings.
“I learned how to under paint and come forward. It’s what I did to paint the elephant.”
Reta and her husband, Don, have lived in the Cariboo since 2007, coming from Edmonton, where they lived and worked for 10 years. Prior to that, home was Salmon Arm where the couple unintentionally developed a successful business making teddy bears.
Don, a mechanic, wanted a toy bear for a grandchild and Reta, with a background in home economics and sewing, searched out patterns and sewed a beauty.
Believing people would buy them, Reta made more and the couple sold them at farmers’ markets, malls and trade shows. They began to advertise in a publication dedicated to teddy bears and good fortune came their way when the bears were featured in articles in multiple magazines.
Eventually, they had eight employees making the bears while Reta designed them.
The teddies served as a main element in a television fundraiser for food banks, which drew a lot of publicity. Later, specially designed Rotary bears were taken to Mexico and sold at a Rotary International convention there.
Before they knew it, their stuffies were being shipped all over the world, but the enterprise came to an end when Don developed an allergy to the materials.
With stuffed animals a thing of their past, Reta now brings images of animals alive with paint and canvas rather than fabric and stuffing.
See her show at Showcase Gallery, which is located in the main lobby at 475 Birch Ave. It’s open Monday to Friday, 10 a.m.-4 p.m., and on Saturday, from noon to 4 p.m.
