There is art in our past

It has been long enough that Phyllis Herman couldn’t quite recall the year she last had a show at the Godfrey Dean Gallery.

But the artist said she was happy to be back.

“I approached Don (Stein) if there was the possibility to have one,” she explained Sunday during an artist reception focused on her latest show.

That was a couple of years ago. The interim time was used to create most of the works in the show.

“They’re all pencil and coloured pencil,” said Herman, who explained she had used both in portrait art in the past, but the new show focuses on scenery.

Herman finds the inspiration for her pieces by hitting the road with her camera.

“I go out and take pictures out in the country,” she said, adding she has recently been attracted to old buildings which allow her to capture images of the area’s past in her works, adding if they are not soon captured they may be gone.

“The Tonkin elevator’s not there anymore,” she said. “The Phone Hill School is not there anymore.”

Herman said it is becoming more difficult to find buildings not already lost to time, but she enjoys photography and the search.

“There’s still a few I haven’t photographed,”she said.

To have the material to inspire an art piece Herman said she takes photographs from various angles.

“It’s always an asset when there’s a nice big cloud in the sky behind [the building]. I think it adds to it because Saskatchewan skies are so vivid.

“And I like doing skies.”

For Herman, 82, art has always been part of her life.

“I was always drawing in school as a kid,” she said. “I’d stay drawing on the blackboard during recess as there wasn’t much to draw on at home.”

Along the way, Herman said she took a few classes locally, but for the most part her art has been self-taught.

And now she even does some instruction herself, all part of staying active in her art.

“It keeps my mind going. A major part of staying young is the mind,” she said.