KAWARTHA LAKES- When Anne Kulmala can’t sleep she doesn’t count sheep. She works on one of her “wool paintings” instead.
Kulmala is a professionally trained artist and has worked with watercolours, oil and acrylic paints, even bronze sculptures but her new passion is “wool painting”. “I’m in love.” Kulmala told Kawartha 411. “I love the textural feel of it, you can use such vibrant colour and its very forgiving. If you work with water colour you put that colour on the page that’s it, it’s on there, done. This you can pull things off, you can replace them so you can challenge yourself to go out of your comfort zone and use really vibrant colours and textures because if you don’t like it you can bring it back.”
Wool painting is a form of two dimensional, felt art needling. Kulmala was given some initial instruction from her sister in-law but is mostly self taught. “I just started working away with the wool until I found my own system and my own style and that’s what you see in the store.”
Kulmala owns the store Curious? in Fenelon Falls and sells her work out of that location. She says people are often surprised that its wool and that makes the “painting” unique. “It’s a conversation piece. I’ve had artwork go all over the world. I have pieces in Japan, two in Sweden one in Germany, all over the UK and all over the US. So they’ve gone amazing places from little old Fenelon Falls.” Kulmala exclaims.
If you want to try a hand at it yourself Kulmala offers one-day workshops throughout the fall and winter. The cost is $105 including material and refreshments. For upcoming classes keep an eye on the Facebook page:https://www.facebook.com/curiousfenelon/
