Artist
A true passion for art.
A bit about me… My name is Mira and I grew up in Northern Quebec, in the great Northern Boreal forests of the Ottawa River Valley. I now reside in the South Carolina Lowcountry. Both of these natural environments have had a great impact on the subjects of my paintings that I have now collected into a whimsical coloring book. My wish is that my coloring book will bring people together.
In a world geared to immediate gratification, we miss the human connection of sitting around a table with family and friends enjoying an activity. Everyone can color; you don’t have to be an artist. As children we all did this for fun. Coloring creates a meditative state, a place to slow down, reconnect and have a sense of accomplishment. Even Swiss psychiatrist Karl Jung used it as therapy for his patients!
I came to the Lowcountry and stayed because of the amazing natural beauty, so different from home yet just as inspiring in its semi tropical lushness. As a single parent, Hilton Head Island provided an environment well suited to raising a child close to nature and I have been actively involved, for the past 30 years in funding arts education in the local school systems.
My teen-age daughter, much like her generation, is plugged into their technology rather than the people around them. My hope is that my coloring book will provide families with an escape from the constant external stimulation of the modern world. I hope it gives them some much-needed time to relax.
My connection to the land began as a newborn. It all started with my father and our explorations. He would bundle me on an Indian cradleboard like a papoose and place me in the front of his birch bark canoe. This is how I got the nickname, Papoose. Growing up in the “bush” as we called it was a constant fascination for me. As I grew, my father taught me about the plants and wildlife and how to identifying them by name, as well as what they were used for. My mother was born and raised in Poland and also taught me about plants and how they were used in Europe.
My parents helped connect me to my environment, with my father pointing out the visual details and my mother pointing out the emotional details. They both respected the land and everything it provided. I say all of this because this is my inspiration: my paintings are my memories of this beginning intertwined with myth, stories, and natural history.
I paint but it’s not really a choice; I feel it is something I have to do. Color plays a very big role in my paintings. So much so, that sometimes just seeing a color will inspire me to take another direction in a painting. Little moments, and I call them little because sometimes I think I am the only person that notices them or they are so
My coloring book contains 45 hand drawn illustrations, printed single-sided on high quality paper specially selected and suited to colored pencils, fine point marker or most paints. The 10″ x 10″ format has a hidden spiral bind so each page lays flat and can be easily removed if you would like to frame your creation.
My paintings were the inspiration for the illustrations in my coloring book.
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