Award-winning painter brings art to the people.
Artist Sheila Mitchell left the world of corporate internet technology to focus on her love of art and to promote the artists who create the work.
Staff photo/DAN PEARCE
Sheila Mitchell is an award-winning painter who is compassionate to the struggles artists face when it comes to getting their work seen and purchased. And it's this deep insight into the lives of artists that makes her a hero in the arts community.
Mitchell, in her role as executive director of the not-for-profit group Art For All Canada, organizes an art show and conference in downtown Toronto at Metro Hall. The springtime event features seminars, support networks and tips for all artists, from newbies to those more established in their careers.
"It's artists teaching artists," she said, adding she hopes the event will grow to two shows per year.
The conference also features an art show where artists sell their work directly to buyers without Art for All Canada taking any commission.
"It's also a really good message for the buyer because they know they are buying directly from the artist and that's the price the artist has valued the art at."
Although she lives and breathes in the art world now, she wasn't always entrenched in the scene. In the spring of 2001, she went to California and snapped dozens of landscape images. When she came home she bought oil paints and took a brush to the canvas.
"I hadn't painted since I'd been in high school," she said.
In 2002, she joined the North York Visual artists and by the following year she was president of the group. Mitchell held that post for four years.
"During that time, I realized there were a whole lot of problems that artists had to show their work. And a lot of (the challenges) were just getting the work out and finding walls to hang it on."
Mitchell discovered traditional galleries charge the artist commission, anywhere from 20 to 80 per cent, she said. This was the springboard for her volunteer work in helping artists find spaces to show their artwork that didn't charge commission. That's when her business background mixed with her new-found love of the art scene.
The transition from the corporate world of IT to the art scene seems like a far stretch because the fields sit at either end of the spectrum, however, "I had to do a re-birth, almost, because you do think of things in business terms and now you are at the other side. And you are the creative person."
To help make the transition seamless, she enrolled in art classes at the Art Gallery of Ontario and went to as many workshops as she could to learn how people were thinking and "embroiled herself in this new way of thinking," she said.
With her two daughters now grown up Mitchell is looking at new ways to take her through her third semester in life.
"It's been very exciting and I've had a lot of fun."
Also in tune with her art-in-public-spaces philosophy, she runs the 4 in 1 Art Show gallery at Rainbow Cinemas in the St. Lawrence Market area, which showcases the work of four new artists each month in a non-commissioned environment.
And later this summer, Art For All Canada is at the Canadian National Exhibition in the arts and crafts building showing the work of 33 artists who will be there daily offering demonstrations. Again, this is a commission-free event. "It's bringing the art to the people, because it's hard to bring the people to the art, that's what I've found," she said. "It's very difficult to get an audience to it."
For more information on Art For All Canada, visit www.artforallcanada.org and for more details on the artist, visit www.artistsheila.com