A young woman’s love of animals and drawing has captured the attention of art lovers and judges at this year’s Calgary Stampede.
Marleen Palsson, who recently graduated from high school in Standard, Alta., won $2,000 for her pen and ink portrait of a favourite Simmental calf as part of the Stampede western art scholarship program.
She won first place in the rural division and plans to use the money to help pay for her veterinary education.
“I want to do something with animals,” said the 17-year-old artist, who lives on her family’s mixed farm near Standard.
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“I love drawing horses; they’re my main subjects,” said Palsson, who has been taking drawing lessons for six years.
She flipped through her sketch book for a potential entry when she heard about the scholarship program and found a portrait that was partly completed. With encourage-m ent from her instructor, she entered and won.
Palsson has entered art contests at the Stampede and local fairs for many years and received some recognition. This was her biggest win yet.
“I’ve given stuff away, but I’ve never sold anything,” she said.
“I was surprised to see I got first place. We have come here in the past and looked around at the paintings. They are just amazing.”
However, she impressed internationally known artist Harley Brown, who was chosen to create the artwork for the Stampede poster to mark the show’s centennial in 2012.
His oil portrait depicts Guy Weadick, the founder of the Stampede, and a young boy in the forefront representing the future.
“She is too young to know how well she did,” Brown said.
Palsson considers her art to be a hobby and wants to be a large animal veterinarian, but Brown thinks she is a rare talent with a natural gift of good design.
“She did things in that, that are very subtle and right in art,” he said.
Brown was born in Moose Jaw, Sask., and raised in Calgary, where he started sketching native people from the nearby Tsuu T’ina Nation in the early 1960s.
He attended the Alberta College of Art and the Camberwell School of Art in London and moved to Arizona with his wife, Carol, where he is known as one of the Tucson Seven, a group of western artists.
Most of his work is in pastels and he has travelled the world drawing from life and his own photographs to portray the famous and the ordinary.
His works sell for thousands of dollars.
“As soon as you start to make money, you never graduate into art. You have to go the starvation route.”
You have to know there is no alternative,” he said.
