'I'm painting summer sunshine all winter long'
With bigger and brighter paintings, Shawna Lampi-Legaree to host third art show
Dana Bowen
Northern News Services
Saturday, October 31, 2015
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
With 50 painting days set out ahead of her, Shawna Lampi-Legaree was on a race against time to fill the blank canvases with vibrant hues and brilliant designs.
Shawna Lampi-Legaree poses in front of one of 14 watercolour paintings set to go on display at Northern United Place this Saturday, for her art show Magic in the Moments. - Dana Bowen/NNSL photo
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Working nearly every day this fall, the painter said she is exhausted, but it's all been worth it to add some brightness to hers and others' days.
"I'm painting summer sunshine all winter long," she said.
Lampi-Legaree is hosting her third annual art show this coming Saturday at Northern United Place with more than 15 paintings of detailed flowers.
Best known for her work using watercolours, the painter is blossoming out of her usual style and taking on a few acrylic works as well.
Yet she hasn't strayed too far away from what she is best known for - the collection titled Moments of Beauty comes from the thousands of photos of flowers she has taken over the year.
"I do my own photography so I take pictures of them where ever I go," she said. "I take thousands and thousands of pictures of flowers and out of those I will get a handful that are worth working from."
Lampi-Legaree began hosting exhibits in 2013 as a way to hold herself accountable for creating works and to give herself a deadline.
With the show dates set a year in advance, the painter knew how many days she had to finish the work and said this year has been a struggle.
"I got back from our trip in September and I had 50 painting days," she said. "I've taken two days off those 50 days."
Each year the paintings get even bigger, she added, with this year's largest work more than double in size from 2013.
Lampi-Legaree is the founder of Yellowknife Watercolour Society, which she said she began nearly a decade ago as a way to immerse herself into the art form.
"If I actually want to learn how to paint with watercolour then I needed to start an organization so we could start bringing teachers up, so I did," she explained. "If you want something to happen, you have to make it happen yourself."
About 30 members later, the society hosts regular meetings and holds an annual art show, where Lampi-Legaree displayed two of her works last month.
Because the artist is essentially self-taught, she said she owes much of her skills to the watercolour society.
And while she intends to extend past floral works in the future, the painter is quite pleased with her latest collection.
"Flowers are just happy. They are pretty and they're happy," she said. "There's no political statements in it - they are just moments of beauty."
