I am motivated by the beauty of life around us, a child playing in the water, a tree covered in hoar frost against a brilliant sky. By the play of light on glass and water, and the sparkle in an animal’s eye.
Sherry Telle has worked as a creative professional for over 25 years. She attended the Alberta College of Art, after which she embarked on a creative career path teaching watercolour.
Telle is motivated by the beauty of life around us, a child playing in the water, a tree covered in hoar frost against a brilliant sky. She is inspired by the play of light on glass and water, and the sparkle in an animal’s eye. Her incentive to create is a pencil or a brush in her hand.
“Coloured Pencil is where I am the most comfortable, it is the most rewarding medium for me.” Telle uses a process of layering and will use as many layers as the paper will take. She is drawn to intricate details and the control one can achieve with the pencils allows for that.
Telle started using Coloured Pencils when her children were small, and time was short and fell in love with them. It has been debated by many on whether coloured pencil work is considered drawing or painting. The dictionary defines Paint as applying pigment, colour, or paint to. And drawing is defined as producing a likeness or representation by making lines on a surface. Either way Telle loves them.
Telle’s Crystal Butterfly was featured in the Critique Section of Coloured Pencil Magazine.
Telle finds watercolour to be a challenging yet rewarding medium. A photograph is a static representation of a particular moment in time, where as a watercolour seems to be more alive, more open than a photograph, a representation of how one was feeling that day, more encompassing than a photo.
The fluidity and unpredictability of watercolour is one of the qualities Telle finds most fascinating. Capturing the light and the vibrancy of the colours in nature is her goal and watercolour is the only way to achieve that.
Alcohol inks are her latest discovery and such a divergence from her typical mediums. They are fluid and brilliant in colour and so very unpredictable, it is like therapy for the coloured pencil artist.
Sherry Telle has been teaching how to use alcohol inks for several years and enjoys seeing how each artist uses the inks in their own way. Primarily, she uses them on Yupo, a plastic “paper”, that is also used with watercolours to create incredibly unique and individual images.
