After receiving a grant from the City of Lacombe, a local visual artist will be heading to Ontario to pursue injecting colour into her art.
Amanda Bowoade recently received a total of $1,819 from the Lacombe Arts Endowment Fund. The program she will be attending is targeted towards colour theory and the use of colored materials and will be held at the Halliburton School of the Arts in Halliburton, Ontario.
“It’s going to be exciting,” she said about the week-long course she will be attending in June. “I am really looking forward to it.”
Bowoade said that she was thrilled to find out she received the grant and will be putting the funds to good use in the colour theory course.
“I normally work with graphite pencils,” she said. “I’m good at translating things into black and white. I’m not really good with colour.”
The course will involve the use of other coloured materials and direction for attendees to learn exactly how to use chalk pastels and water coloured pencils on different types of papers and surfaces.
“So it’s not all about colour theory but I will learn some colour theory,” she said.
For Bowoade, she has enjoyed a life-long love of creating in black and white.
“I’ve been drawing since I was four and I have been using pencil mostly throughout my life,” she explained. “In high school I was using pencil. I would dabble in water-colour pencils and stuff like that and I enjoyed it, but I usually stick to using graphite.”
Bowoade’s most prominent subject matters are things of the past — objects that are reflections of how life once was.
“I like stuff that has to do with our past, mainly historical stuff, like old wagons and old houses,” she explained.
Bowoade explores the countryside and the surrounding area in search of reflections of the past. Although she is relatively new to Lacombe, she has noted the extensive amount of history in the area. She takes her own photographs to use as reference for each piece she creates.
“I love to draw and I love the beauty of the world around me,” she said. “I am inspired to try to translate that into art. I think that what inspires an artist is sometimes tough to put into just a few sentences.”
Exactly why she is drawn towards recording the past through art lies in how she see the world. “I have a problem with progress,” she said. “I don’t like to see things of the past make way for modern things. You know, how they are always tearing down old buildings and replacing them with stuff. So I like to try to record the past on paper before it disappears, before it get shoveled under progress.
“We are quick to replace it with these modern atrocities that really have no soul or character.”
Bowoade said society seems to be quick to push over buildings and many may not stop to think about the impact the buildings or pieces of history have or had at one time.
“At one point, maybe 100 years ago, that building was someone’s hopes and dreams,” she said. “They just don’t care, so we want to try to put that onto paper before it disappears so that we have a record of it in the future when it’s gone.”
Bowoade said that residents should take more care and attention to the past, as it is where we came from and we should not forget it.
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