G R E AT L I F E | A R T I ST P R O F I L E
Gareth Worrall:
RELAXING THROUGH ART
STORY BY WYATT TREMBLAY | PHOTOS BY SERGEI BELSKI
A
irdrie artist Gareth Worrall loves wide-open Alberta landscapes; the mountains, the lakes and the wind-swept vistas, but that’s not really why he paints them. “It’s a big stress relief,” he says. “I can just basically turn off my mind and focus on what I’m doing, and think about nothing else except what’s right in front of me.” Worrall, who moved from Calgary to Airdrie with his wife more than five years ago, is a bicycle mechanic at Cranked. He used to work for WestJet. “I was working there for quite a few years, but unfortunately due to COVID, quite a few of us were laid off.” 12
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With his job in limbo, he says he began to explore what else he might be interested in doing. Oil painting was something he had done on and off for more than two decades, so he wondered if his art might be a possible career opportunity. His father was a painter who enjoyed doing caricatures, he explains, adding that the television artist Bob Ross was a household staple growing up. Worrall had already begun investing time in his artwork after the move to Airdrie. He was in a few art shows and joined the Airdrie Art Society; he also had a few commissions, provided two colouring contest drawings for Airdrie Parades for Canada Day, and was involved in the Voice & Vision Collaboration project.
