Carla Miedema

Carla’s love of nature and the rugged landscape is reflected in her paintings and pen & ink drawings. Inspiration for her vibrant paintings in oils, acrylics, and watercolour paints, is derived from the land and nature around her home in the Mazinaw / Cloyne area and from her travels. Carla has explored, through her paintings, the resilience and sheer exuberance of roadside foliage, reflections, and the rugged landscape.
 
Some of Carla's work incorporates bits of nature, like bark, grasses, seeds, and other bits of material found in nature, in paintings of nature and the Canadian Shield. She likes to elevate the lesser parts of nature, like mushrooms, lichen, and wildflowers, to a more important level by making them the focal point in her paintings. A third dimension, almost like relief sculpture, is achieved by including bits of nature, and other found objects, and by building up the layers of acrylic paints. The challenges to incorporate these natural elements inspires further development of her art.
 
 Although much of Carla's work is realistic, such as her portraits and pen & ink drawings of wildflowers, a lot more of her paintings are becoming more abstract.  She loves working with colour and various media, and being challenged to create a novel, interesting piece of art work.  Over the past few years her art has become more expressionistic as she experiments with different media  and collage materials on various mediums such as canvas, yupo, watercolour, and various home made papers.

Carla has exhibited in numerous solo and group art exhibitions, and her work can be found in many collections.  Carla is an active member of many art groups, and has been published in books, calendars, and newspapers.  To help promote art in Mazinaw Country, Carla started the Mazinaw Country Studio Tour and the Bon Echo Art Exhibition and Sale, and she's involved with the Cloyne annual Showcase Art & Craft Show.