
Neadeen
Masters CDA - Country Carousel Art©
"To have the support of a
wonderful husband and two caring and beautiful children is to have everything.
To have a career that is also a personal passion is an added
bonus, and one of life's great rewards. To have been given the gift of painting... a gift that I am able to share
with so many through teaching, humor and brush is more than I
could ever have dreamed of. All life and art is really
about how we approach the blank canvas, with humor, conviction
and confidence, the rest will follow! ~ Neadeen Masters CDA
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Neadeen
discovered her interest in painting at a very young age; she has
been painting since the age of nine years. Born and raised in
the tropics, on the island of Trinidad in the southern Caribbean
has given her a unique perspective on the use of
colour. She paints with a very colorful and wide spectrum palette that is
reminiscent of her childhood. The artists uses colour to create
mood in her paintings.
The very relaxed and colorful heritage
of her childhood flavors much of
her work as well as the approach she takes to teaching as a whole.
She has been painting for over forty years and teaching art for
almost half that time. Neadeen immigrated to Canada in 1977 and her family now live in Central British Columbia, in Western
Canada's beautiful Okanagan Valley. Since moving to the Okanagan
almost eighteen years ago, the artist opened a Home Studio which
grew to a Retail Art Store and then she soon began Travel Teaching.
She still presently owns a working studio where she teaches
weekly classes and seminars. Being a self taught artist,
she has gained her art 'knowledge' through experimentation and
continuous research, spending much of her time in search of this.
The artist credits the
'Certification Program' of the National Society,
being awarded the title of 'CDA' Certified Decorative Artist ~ in the
Still Life category, from the Society of Decorative Painters in 1997. She then later entered their
'Masters' program and passed the 'Master Floral' in 2002 and the
'Master Still Life' in 2003. To view her exam "boards" please
visit the
'Recognition' page of
this website.
Continuing art education has been
the focus of her career, in 2004 Neadeen was invited along with
seven other artists to join the Traditions Heritage Team lead by
David Jansen MDA to co-author and develop an educational program
for artists within the decorative painting industry. She is now
one of the seven Heritage Artists for JansenArt Traditions
Paints which is a division of DecoArt. The program was
successfully launched in several foreign countries in 2004 by members of the
Heritage Team and the Traditions Paint company.
Although Neadeen
has devoted the last fifteen years to study and teach decorative
painting, she has never abandoned her desire to return to her
first love, the study of more traditional fine art. In 2004 she
realized her goal was ultimately to study and teach the
technical and academic aspects of traditional fine art and has placed her
focus in pursuing this educational direction in the future.
This artist has
found the freedom that she has always desired to
explore all art without the restraints of painting to a specific style
or market. Over the course of
Neadeen's art career, she has
worked to steadily improve her technique and refine her
application, and this can be seen especially in work created following her return to the study of subjects
more often found in traditional fine art. More recent paintings
demonstrate the effects of her exposure to this study and it is this knowledge and
personal experience that she
wishes to pass on through her future teaching. Many of the
compositions as seen on this website are either teaching or
personal studies in, or of a particular theory and used as a
vehicle to teach. Both of the portrait studies are of the
artist's children at a young age and were
studies.

My thoughts on
'creativity'
I believe that
when children exhibit artistic or creative interests they should
be encouraged at all costs. As parents it is important to
recognize if a child is creative. Unlike the father of the
famous female artist, American impressionist Mary Cassatt, who,
at the beginning of her career stated he would rather see his
daughter dead than become an artist! Later on he became her
staunchest supporter! They say creative children are usually free thinkers,
gullible daydreamers and storytellers. They
usually see humor in much of what others deem as
serious. As a child I was all of the above and much more, I
spent 13 years in an all girls Catholic Convent and I
can tell you (grinning), I did not conform well to such a
structured environment. Yet on the other hand there were
two 'Nuns' who understood and channeled and mentored much of my
creativity and quest for discovery and learning art.
If you
think you may have such a child, here is an excellent
article on the subject;
CHILDREN AND CREATIVITY