HAY RIVER - For two decades, Karen Gelderman has been an art teacher in the NWT.

Karen Gelderman is the art teacher at Hay River's Diamond Jenness Secondary School. - Paul Bickford/NNSL photo

Most of that time has been at Hay River's Diamond Jenness Secondary School, along with three years teaching in Fort Simpson.

"I'm fortunate to be teaching art, I really am. I love it," she said.

Gelderman compares being an art teacher to a coach working with an athlete.

"I like that part of art when kids allow me to make suggestions and sort of urge them on," she said, adding that by working together they figure out a way to improve the student's skills. "So I'm pleased that it works. You can push them there, you can get them there."

Gelderman, 48, has taught at Diamond Jenness for two stints - from 1991-2005 and from 2009 to the current day. She moved to Fort Simpson in the intervening years when her husband, Jack Keefe, was stationed there with the RCMP, before being assigned to Hay River.

As an art teacher, Gelderman instructs students in a variety of things - painting, drawing, printmaking, carving, beading and mosaics.

She believes all students can learn art, although she noted it's more difficult for some and it helps to have an interest in it.

"But in the years I've been teaching, I've seen many kids think they couldn't draw and have been able to show them or helped them to find ways that they could actually do it," she said.

Gelderman believes learning art is beneficial to students.

"I think one of the biggest things is you become more visual, like you look at things in a different way," she said, adding it offers an appreciation of design and the way things are put together.

Gelderman has been drawing since she was a child growing up in the small Alberta community of Neerlandia, a Dutch farming community in the Barrhead area.

She recalled having a chalkboard on which she would draw faces. "Drew and erased. Drew and erased. That was something I did all the time."

Even at a young age, she knew she wanted to become an artist as a career. "I was always sort of like that's what I'll do. That was always appealing," she said.

Gelderman has a bachelor of fine arts from the University of Alberta and a bachelor of education from the University of New Brunswick, where she met Keefe in a registration line.

After graduating from the University of New Brunswick, she got her first job, which happened to be teaching art and English at Diamond Jenness.

She was not particularly looking for a Northern job, although she noted her husband always wanted to come north.

Her husband arrived in Hay River a year after she did once he completed a

master's degree, and he also taught at Diamond Jenness before joining the RCMP.

Aside from teaching art, Gelderman - the mother of two teenage sons - creates her own art, such as pencil landscapes, acrylic paintings, some carvings, logo designs, caricatures and Christmas cards.

In particular, she said she loves doing caricatures. "That I have a lot of fun with because that's something I've always done."

Gelderman enjoys the process of creating art.

"If I'm doing something, it doesn't matter what it turns out to be, it just evolves or something comes of it," she explained.

"It's maybe not what I planned. I like that process and the quiet. I kind of like work that involves a lot of time."

Gelderman has also illustrated a children's book - 'A Good Day; The Adventures of Pompernickel', which is

the story of a puffin written by Hay River's Rodger Blake.

"It was a learning process," Gelderman said of helping create the book.

"It's really great to have a finished product like that, too."

She would like to someday become a professional artist.

"I can see going that way eventually as I kind of develop more."

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