The Olds Art Club Fall Show and Sale takes place November 1 and 2 at the Olds College Bell e-Learning Centre (south foyer entrance).
This year, the featured artist is longtime Olds-Bowden-area resident Marie Paterson.
She worked in ceramics from 1976 to 1984 and has painted with watercolours, but now paints with acrylics most of the time.
“It's faster; I can get more done,” she says, noting oils take much longer to dry.
However, she finds advantages to oils too.
“It's easier to blend with oils so there won't be any rough edges,” she says.
Paterson moved to the Bowden area from Ireland in 1957 where she lived on a farm for many years.
She never had any formal training in art as a child. However, she always had an interest in art.
So after she raised her family on the farm, Paterson enrolled in an art class in 1986 and never looked back.
It's been a little tougher for Paterson lately. Two years ago she fell and broke her femur.
“I was never right after that,” she says.
She's now recovering from a full hip replacement.
“They called me the energizer bunny; now I'm just the slowpoke,” she says with a laugh.
Paterson will have several paintings in the show, including a painting of mist and water she created long, long ago when she was first learning to paint.
The show will also feature some very colourful paintings, including one of a sunset on the farm in the Bowden area where she lived for so many years.
Another, provided for the show by her son, shows a road through the trees toward the mountains. He used to drive that route.
When the Albertan caught up with Paterson she was working on her latest painting -- The Oregon Coast, which depicts surf hitting a beach and cliff. Paterson saw that scene during a drive down the Oregon coast and it stayed with her.
“I don't make anything, just get enough money to get my paint and canvases. As long as it makes me happy, that's the main thing,” she says with a smile. “It keeps me going, anyway.”
