For six weeks, Sherry Park lived by herself in a ranger’s house in Cape Breton Highlands National Park and hiked four to six kilometres of trail every day.
“It was such a beautiful place,” she said. “At the same time, I was so terrified — really, really scared.”
Park, a Brampton-based artist, had mainly practiced portraits and had never painted a landscape scene. When she got home, she started.
“When I started painting, it just flowed right out,” she said. “It just was natural.”
Paintings from that trip now hang in the Joyner Gallery at the Niagara Pumphouse Arts Centre, which opened Park’s Contemplation in Nature exhibition with a reception on Oct. 4.
She was born in Korea and moved to Canada at age 10. She studied drawing and painting at OCAD University, known as the Ontario College of Art when she attended, and spent her final year in Florence, Italy.
After graduating, she worked as a pharmacy technician for about 15 years, creating no art.
Around 2013, she started again with portraits and drawings and joined artist groups, including the Ontario Society of Artists. After about five years, she was confident enough to rent a cubicle-sized studio in Brampton. She now paints in a studio at the Alton Mill Arts Centre in Caledon.
Park told The Lake Report she took on the residency in Cape Breton, N.B. to push herself, because challenging herself is the only way she can keep developing.
“I forced myself to go,” she said. “I wanted to see if I could develop as a landscape artist.”
Most days she hiked to see as much of the mountains and ocean trails as she could, photographing scenes from several angles and in different light. Her large canvases take two or three months each.
“When you look at the forest, it’s like there’s so much, and sometimes it’s overwhelming,” she said.
She plans to keep painting both landscapes and figures, and she hopes the show encourages people to appreciate and protect nature.
Park said she wants to paint cityscapes and urban scenes next, to see where that work leads.
