Award winning watercolour Artist and teacher, Sheila Karrow lives with her husband and two children on the Queen Charotte Islands in British Columbia. Sheila's watercolour and acrylic paintings can been seen at the Burdette Gallery in Ontario and across the West coast of British Columbia.

Influenced by early Canadian landscape painters, Sheila's images illustrate the necessity between the human spirit and the land. Over the past decade Sheila has been examining the relationship between humans and their surroundings, specifically, the natural world around us. Her early work looked at urban spaces and human "organization" of such spaces.

After studying trees in Northern British Columbia, Sheila began to focus on the relationship between humans and trees. Learning of burial sites inside of trees and becoming familiar with old growth trees where there are living spaces inside, she thought about the idea of protection (trees protecting people, totems protecting tribes, products from trees helping people etc). Sheila continues to develop her work as she examines the importance of light on living matter. All things connect and flow and we are part of this. What has died, becomes the body for new life; there is no end. Sheila shows this interdependence of living things in her works by emphasizing the organic forest colours in green, sienna and ochre. The soil is filled with details of roots and new plants; and in looking deeper, one can see an abstraction of form. Sheila's paintings communicate both a literal and metaphorical understanding of the natural world. She strives for an intimate connection with the subject yet also reveals the unknowable reality of such a form. As with her earlier work, she continues to explore light and dark imagery as well as life and death. These elements seem even more significant in an old growth forest where times stands still yet new life and ages past both share the same space.

"I found my spirit in the forest, and there I left it."

1992

University of Waterloo, Ontario, honours BFA and English Minor.

Succession: Our Changing Landscape, Homer Watson Gallery, Kitchener.
Clarica, Waterloo, Ontario.

"Urban Nature", Rotunda Gallery, Kitchener, CKCO TV coverage.
Clarica, Waterloo, Ontario.

"Artists of the New Moon", Village of Queen Charlotte, B.C.

Paris Art show, Fine Arts Gallery, University of Waterloo.

Grand Prize winner, Season's competition, City of Waterloo.
First Place, First place, and Second place, Season's competition, City of Waterloo.
Honourable Mention, KWSA juried show, Kitchener Art Gallery.

Belmont Centre for Physical Medicine, Kitchener, Ontario.
Cedar River Physiotherapy, Terrace, B.C.
Drs. Jones, Scott, Kalbfleish and Haley's office, Waterloo, Ontario.
Dueck, Sauer, Jutzi and Noll Law office, Waterloo, Ontario.
Dufferin County Museum, Rosemont, Ontario.
Hemmerich Hearing Clinic, Kitchener, Ontario.
Quarry Integrated Communications, Waterloo, Ontario.
Tech Capital, Waterloo, Ontario.
University of Waterloo, Earth Science Museum, Ontario.
Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario.

Assistant Art Teacher, Snyder Art Services, Waterloo.