Art on the Roof: De-stressing your creative side
Art on the Roof owner Shelly Matthews poses in her Rathdrum studio with a poppy painting she created for a recent class. (Photos/NINA CULVER)
Friends Carlana Coogle (left) and Beth Evans (right) concentrate on their canvases during a July poppy-painting class at Art on the Roof in Rathdrum.
Carlana Coogle works to blend various shades of green and yellow to create grass in her painting at a recent Art on the Roof class in Rathdrum.
Student artists Carlana Coogle (left) and Beth Evans (right) used cooked spaghetti coated in paint to create lines that would become poppy stems.
Shelly Matthews nurtured her love of art for decades until retirement finally gave her a chance to open the teaching studio of her dreams, Art on the Roof in Rathdrum.
“I was trained as an art teacher,” she said. “Life had a few twists and turns and I ended up starting a preschool in 1996.”
Matthews founded LAM Christian Academy (Lutheran Academy of the Master) in Coeur d’Alene in 1996, where she served as a teacher, director and principal until her recent retirement. She opened her studio at 8052 W. Main in Rathdrum in June and has been busy teaching those who want to try their hand at art for the first time, and those who want to refine their techniques.
“I didn’t retire, I redirected,” she said.
She works in a variety of styles and said she can’t pick a favorite.
“I started out in watercolors and moved into acrylic,” Matthews said. “It kind of depends on the day. I like to do a lot of things.”
She’s also done mixed media work and has taken sculpture classes from noted Coeur d’Alene artist Terry Lee.
Whatever her medium, her favorite thing to create is flowers.
She offers an acrylic paint pour class that gives people a good introduction to art. People simply pick the colors and pour the paint on the canvas.
“You can’t mess them up and you can’t control them,” she said.
She lets her students choose whether she offers step-by-step instructions or just ideas.
“I love the people who say they can’t draw a stick figure,” she said. “Those are my biggest challenges.”
The idea isn’t to have students create a perfect painting, but to focus on the process, she said.
“I can take away all the stress of it and make it fun,” she said. “I teach them how to break it down and focus on the process and not the end result. It’s all about the experience. The process of doing art is good for the soul.”
Friends Carlana Coogle and Beth Evans signed up to take a recent poppy painting class from Matthews. Coogle said she tried a painting class once before and what was supposed to look like a Lotus flower instead came out looking like Patrick from SpongeBob.
Evans said she’s tried painting with watercolors, with less success.
“My mom does watercolor,” Evans said. “She’s really good at it. The bug hasn’t bitten me. I’m not very good at it.”
When Evans found Art of the Roof on Facebook and decided it sounded like fun, Coogle agreed to come along.
“I’m not good at it,” Coogle said. “I’m not crafty. But I’ll do it.”
They gathered on the roof of the Palidash Building in Rathdrum, surrounded by inspirational baskets and pots overflowing with flowers.
Matthews showed the two an example of poppies that she had done previously and told them to begin by making a sky, and green grass background for their poppies. She encouraged them to mix different colors of acrylic paint to make different hues and reminded them it wasn’t supposed to be like a photograph.
“This is an impressionist painting,” she said. “Let it mix on your brush. Let it mix on your painting.”
Coogle was soon painting like a pro, dabbing different colors on her canvas and using her brush to blend and mix them. She added yellow to her greens, creating strokes of light and dark. Evans paused, realizing that her green was a little too blue for her liking. Matthews offered suggestions of colors to layer on top to fix it. “Let’s play,” Matthews said.
Coogle was pleased with her painting. “No SpongeBob here, baby,” she said. “I kinda like it.”
Matthews suggested an interesting way to add lines that would be the flower stems: Coating cooked spaghetti in paint and flopping it down on the canvas randomly.
“I would encourage you to try something new,” she said. “It’s really fun to paint with spaghetti.”
Coogle was hesitant, afraid that she might ruin her painting. “The spaghetti makes me nervous,” she said.
But she tried it a few times and ended up pleased with the result, as was Evans. They liked the random angles of the lines created on the canvas. “You can’t get that effect on purpose,” Evans said.
In the end, Coogle was glad she had agreed to come along and vanquish her SpongeBob memory.
“It’s just fun to make something,” she said.
Matthews said that once people take one of her classes, they tend to come back.
“What I’m finding is I have a lot of repeat people,” she said. “They want to improve their art, their technique.”
Matthews has several classes for all ages coming up this summer, including sessions focused on monarch butterflies, the night sky, fish and sailboats. A full schedule is available at Artsontheroof.com and on the Art on the Roof Facebook page.