When Karen Courtney looks at the contours and cavities of a skull that belonged to a buffalo or steer, she doesn't see bleach-white bone and cavernous eye sockets.
She sees the potential for art.
“Because there is so many ups and downs and the obvious eye sockets and so on, then I go, OK, I can see hills and trees there, I can see rocks, I can see this being 3-D almost,” said Courtney.
The Bowden artist isn't keen on using traditional media for her artwork, preferring to use unusual platforms such as milk cans and feathers to capture her painted landscapes, animals and western scenes.
And since the early 1980s, Courtney has painted on skulls.
“I just always thought it was a neat piece of work,” she said. “The subject itself is the piece of art to me. It lends itself to it.”
Using skulls from cows, horses, steers and buffalo as her canvas, Courtney creates western scenes, often focusing on the theme of “horse and rider.”
If there are crevices and cracks—or even bullet holes—in the skulls, she'll incorporate them into the piece.
“I work around that. I don't disguise it or hide it.”
Courtney said she has no formal artistic training, other than some guidance from her sister when they were younger, and in her early days she focused on “country folk art.”
Since she began working with boney backdrops, she has painted and sold dozens of skulls in Canada and the U.S. and some of her work has even gone to Japan.
Friends often give the skulls to Courtney or she'll collect them from farms.
In some cases, people approach her with the skull of a beloved animal for her to create a custom painting.
“Say they had a favourite horse that died, passed away, and they want a scene of them with their horse, I do that on their own skull,” she said.
The skulls, she added, need to be dry and old and she sandblasts them before sealing the bone with a primer “so it looks old again, looks white again.”
Courtney uses acrylic paint for the scenes and when she finishes a piece, she'll varnish it and add features such as beads, rope or feathers.
Each piece takes roughly 30 hours to finish and Courtney, who works as a security guard, said she has to be in the right frame of mind to paint.
The price for a completed skull can range anywhere from $400 to $1,200 depending on the size and type of skull Courtney has painted on.
Recently, Courtney has branched out into new territory with her art as she created the cover for Bowden author Michael Parlee's latest novel, We Must Forgive to Live.
“He told me the story, I never read the book,” she said. “As he was telling me, I could see it. I could see what he wanted on the cover.”
She said a realtor helped connect her and Parlee and the experience of creating cover art for the book was great but “challenging” since she was working in a new and different area.
Courtney also helped colour the illustrations for a new children's book Parlee is finishing.
She is now creating hand-painted cremation boxes as she said there is a market for such items.
“People are asking for them.”
Courtney said she usually doesn't put her artwork in stores due to the large commission charged but she added her sister has a store in Caroline called Billy the Bear where she will soon be selling her pieces.
