After taking more seminars,
I began painting full time in acrylics and selling folk art wood pieces
both privately and at recognised shows. Over the next five years,
my husband Marty and I created and produced our own wood pieces.
Because of high quality and customer satisfaction, his wood pieces are
in demand throughout Canada and the United States, and are finding a growing
market as far away as Japan.
In the early 1980's, we realized
our dream of having a log cabin studio by purchasing an old farmstead with
the original, but derelict, 1835 settler's cabin. A lot of blood,
sweat and tears went into disassembling and reconstructing the old cabin
in a new location on the property. In 1986, I began teaching
folk art classes, and in 1988, we opened a studio in the basement of our
home where I taught beginning, intermediate and advanced classes, and Marty
used the cabin as a woodworking shop.
The cabin progressed from
work shop to classroom, and now functions as a retail store with an entire
range of painting supplies as well as painted and unfinished wood pieces
in pine and oak. Our modern studio and Marty's woodworking shop now
adjoin it.
In 1997, a long way from
purple bunnies on yellow walls, I found myself halfway around the world
teaching my own decorative art patterns to students in Japan, some of whom
had been among the first students in my basement classes.
I now have an extensive line
of pattern packets which are distributed across Canada and the United States,
as well as publications appearing on the market. Unfinished wood
pieces for each packet are available through this web site and our catalogue. |