Winnipeg artist and pianist Shirley Elias helps you discover the visual inspirations of art and music through Mussorgsky’s Masterpiece “Pictures at an Exhibition” – on Classic 107
Colouring in the linesEntrepreneurial local painters aim for commercial acceptance, buck stereotype of starving artist
By: Morley Walker for the Winnipeg Free PressPhoto by Phil Hossack Winnipeg Free Press
When you hear the title of the new show at Art Beat Gallery, two ideas should immediately come to mind: it involves two people and they make some beautiful music together.
Most people are lucky if they have one artistic skill, and luckier still if they’re able to pursue it professionally. Shirley Elias has been lucky a few times over: her first success was as a concert pianist, and now she has found another calling as a painter. She had always dabbled in the visual arts, but until about a decade ago it took a back seat to her music. But then she started receiving commissions for her work — more than 60 — and things took off from there.