There’s nothing like a seemingly limitless prairie field in front of a powerful dark storm to inspire award winning artist & Storm Chaser Ian Sheldon and the consistently potent colors of his sky-scape representations from central Alberta are highly sought after.
I have had images of Alberta engrained in my mind, as an Albertan for so long abroad. When I returned to this province after many years, it was the landscape that evoked a strong sense of place and belonging. I am part of this land, as this land is part of me. Only in the prairies do I feel connected and complete. The landscapes I depict come from the heart, mind and real place. My spirit lives and seeks refuge in these landscapes.
I am most inspired during a summer storm. The energy I derive from standing in the midst of a tornado-bearing storm instills a vigour that flies out of me through the paintbrushes. I feel connected with the elements in that moment. When the sky apparently fuses with land during a torrential downpour, I feel like the heavens are reaching down for a brief moment and instilling life into the arid plains. It is these events in the vast prairie that continue to inspire me, consuming my summer days as I listen for storm warnings and study the radar for an approaching downpour.
Recently I have pondered the significance of landscape and the ability to transfer the sense of place and belonging to landscapes that share similar physical components. It has become clear that the flat line of the horizon allows my spirit to flow freely as an artist. As a result of this freedom, I have become drawn to experiences that involve vast open spaces – in deserts, in the arid altoplano of Patagonia, and in the endless open ocean of the Atlantic.
It is in the vast open spaces of the natural world where I find the greatest comfort and hope.
Ian Sheldon MA (Cantab) MSc is an award-winning, career artist internationally known for his diversity in both medium and subject. He is renowned as both a landscape painter and a Storm Chaser with television profiles, magazine cover stories and a considerable archive of other media coverage. In 2011 he published Storm Chaser: Canadian Prairie Skyscapes with Argenta Press. The book was celebrated in Toronto with a major art show supported by the Canada Council for the Arts and the Alberta Foundation for the Arts.
Born in Edmonton, Canada and spending many formative childhood years in South Africa, Singapore and England, Sheldon sees himself as a citizen of the world. After graduating from Cambridge, he has made his home back in Canada. Once settled on the edge of the prairies of Alberta, Sheldon immersed himself in both university studies and the vast Canadian wilderness, and was initially inspired to paint the abandoned buildings of the early settlers leading to acquisitions by the Alberta Foundation for the Arts.
The artist got his start by painting historic architecture of the city of Cambridge while studying Natural Sciences at Cambridge University (Magdalene 1990). This soon led to gallery representation, a major exhibit in the city, and then the publication by Cambridge University Press of his exceptional volume of watercolours, Cambridge Footsteps: a passage through time in 2009. This collection of paintings is taken from over ten years of work and was launched to celebrate the University’s 800th anniversary. The originals have been sent to collectors all around the world including Cambridge University Press.
Sheldon soon began to focus his attention on the wide horizon and big sky of the prairie. Working in oil, these sometimes huge paintings explore his sense of place and are highly sought after. Shows across Canada, and in San Francisco and New York have firmly cemented his presence in the art world and by 2004, by the age of 33, he was already listed in the Canadian Who’s Who for his contributions to the national arts and culture scene.
Additional recognition came in 2010 with the publication of Creative Glass (Schiffer Publishing), a coffee-table book of 110 international glass artists. This book showcases Sheldon’s more recent exploration of glass as a medium. By kiln-forming and glazing the glass, he creates stunning, kinetic landscapes that capture the hearts and imaginations of many. Examples of his glasswork are found across Canada, including installations at The Weather Network’s head office and in The Bow building, one of Calgary’s newest and most magnificent towers. Never wanting to confine his artistic explorations, and constantly evolving, Sheldon has most recently explored printing his abstract photography onto aluminum to create large minimalist ocean scenes that form part of his collection Atlantic Meditations.
Further recognition has come from the University of Alberta, where Sheldon took a second degree. Combining his talents as an artist with academic knowledge of wildlife, his illustrations have been published in dozens of nature guides that grace bookshelves across North America. Hundreds of the original entomological illustrations are now a permanent part of the university’s highly reputed Bruce Peel Special Collections Library, serving as a testament to the artist’s skill in yet another creative arena and a wonderful legacy to the province and country.
“Over the years I have enjoyed observing people as they view my art. I have wondered what makes a person sometimes cry when they are immersed in a particular scene. A client once purchased a green field painting, and she started to cry, and in between the sobs she said it reminded her of her father, but she didn’t know why because, in her words, “he wasn’t even a farmer.” He had died, and it was clear to me as a newly emerged healer that this woman was in fact receiving heart-healing, because greens are the colour of the heart. Over the years I have realized just how important colour therapy is for the soul, and how we should never underestimate nor downplay our emotional response to any art, even, and perhaps especially, when we have no idea what and why something has been triggered.
A few years ago I was plunged into the mysterious and beautiful world of shamanic healing. It wasn’t a choice, more of an imperative – an order from spirit. I accepted the role and embarked on a new and additional career. As I explored and healed through the various chakras, it was so clear to me that my work in the spiritual realm of colour was a direct tie-in to the physical world of my colourful paintings. Not only that, but I had inadvertently been healing myself all these years! And now with both spiritual work and painting, I find myself healing others with colour”
