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Calgary Herald

Nature and art bring healing and peace for Calgary abstract mixed-media artist, Cherisse Mia

Roughly 12 years ago, Cherisse Mia decided she was going dedicate herself to art. Article content Her children had grown up, so the self-taught Calgary artist committed herself to her practise full-time. She treated it as if she were taking art in university, buying all the books and supplies, and taking inspiration from artists such as early 20th-century Russian abstract painter Wassily Kandisnky and Austrian symbolist artist Gustav Klimt. Article content Article content Article content She also made hundreds of sketches and set out to find her voice through trial and error. Article content Article content 'I started teaching myself full-time, just dived head on,' Mia says in an interview from her booth at the Western Oasis Art Show at the BMO Centre. 'I did painting every day for three years.' Article content In 2017, she applied to get in to the Western Oasis Art Show, the annual Calgary Stampede gathering of dozens of artists. She didn't get in, so she opted to set up a booth on Stephen Avenue near the Calgary Convention Centre, which had a street market set up during the Stampede. Article content She caught the attention of someone who worked at the convention centre, who gave her a window to display her art. She eventually sold pieces to the centre. Article content In 2018, Mia was accepted into the Stampede art show and has attended every year since. Article content Article content There is a certain irony that her first major sale would be in the heart of downtown Calgary. Article content A mixed-media artist who uses natural materials such as fossils and gemstones — including plenty of Alberta ammolite — to create abstract landscapes, the natural world has always been central to Mia's work as subject matter, inspiration and as a way to create organic textures. Article content Her often large-scale paintings — which Mia sells throughout North America — are a bit of an outlier compared to much of the art at the Western Oasis, a testament to the ever-expanding definition of western or cowboy art. Article content A recent work, a seven-by-three-foot textured landscape, which she calls Elements of Alberta, is a mountain scene using white and muted colours. The bottom half is made up of 50 layers of paint, with gemstones and fossils embedded into it. Article content 'I feel like nature gave me the gift of giving me the idea to put fossils and gemstones onto the art because I was always out hunting for rocks, and now I go down to the river and hunt for ammolite in southern Alberta,' she says.