Shelley Koke is a painter who loves nature photography and creating art in various mediums. Still teaching in the elementary classroom, she is never more passionate and excited when leading and inspiring young artists to create their own works.

For the last 40 years, she has been involved in both the performing arts as a singer, teacher and instrumentalist, and in visual arts in various capacities. She started her own hand-painted T-shirt business in London, Ontario, while attending Western music school. She designed and painted several hundred T-shirts and sold them in local shops, craft shows and at the Stratford Festival. She developed her skills in drawing and mixing colours and experimented with many different techniques of applying paint to the shirts during this time.

From business school to music and then on to education, her passion for art and music followed her. In recent years, the vibrant greens of the forests on Bowen Island have inspired her to once again to pick up paints and brushes to capture the intensity of the colours in our natural world. Many of her works feature trees, sky and water and many mimic a view of what one might see looking from a window into woods, striving to capture the calm serenity of these peaceful places.

Her dad was an accomplished Alberta potter who made and sold his wares for 10-15 years after retiring. Her mother had considerable talent in painting pictures, but she never sold her paintings. Shelley has discovered a joy and passion for painting and playing with colours and pigments.

“Time stops when I immerse myself in my painting. My brain sizzles with the high of creating when I get caught up in a project.

I love the natural patterns created by a blanket of moss, a fern, ripples in sand. Looking into a clearing in the forest on a sunny day and seeing the way the light rises like smoke from the shadows surrounding it excite me.

The multitude of greens in the forest create in me a feeling of peace and feed my spirit.”