Jan 4, 2010

Artist likes sharing her gift on special giftsBy Ellie CummingsChillicotheGazette.com

Waverly — Imagine a drafty garage barely tamed with a robust space heater.

All around are rows and piles of window frames, odd boards and occasional trunks.

In the middle sits Michaela Schrader, 41, Waverly, at work. Surrounded by pots of varying brushes, palettes and paints, she’s putting finishing touches on a custom landscape on wood commissioned for a “big” birthday.

Apologizing for her paint splattered work shirt, she smiles happily. And right she should: Schrader long has chased a dream to be a successful artist working from home. When Penny Lane Publishing and Licensing Co. recently contracted with her, she whooped with joy at the potential with the worldwide company.

Through Penny Lane, Crossroads Candle Co. now uses her art on tables and lamps that it, in turn, wholesales to retail stores.

Schrader grew up in picturesque Staffordshire County, England, in a village of 700 with one post office and five pubs.

First drawing at her artist grandfather’s knee, over time she has developed a primitive signature style reminiscent of her home country. She often works in a warm palette with ochres and umbers, subdued with a spattered, antiquing glaze. Charming curly lambs, willows and salt box cottages abound on subjects as small as a pottery creamer or as expansive as custom wall-sized murals.

Schrader remembers being a “shy sort of leader” in school, and although pleased to be accepted in a good art school, she decided against going, put art on the side, came to the U.S. as a nanny in Colonial Williamsburg and married a Marine. She liked the U.S. and now, with a second husband, James, has five grown children.

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