B.C. artist Marie Nagel blossomed as an acrylic painter in Wells in the 1990s and blazed a colourful trail others would follow.

She converted an old Anglican Church in Wells to her art gallery and studio in 1991 when Wells seemed on the verge of becoming another Cariboo ghost town. Art has been in the town’s DNA ever since.

Her Wells period from 1991-2007 was marked by vibrant semi-abstract acrylics on canvas, often depicting the mountains, forests and collapsing old buildings of the Cariboo landscape. It was a major departure from her watercolours of the 1980s.

Saskatchewan-born, she attended the Alberta College of Art in the 1960s, and had been a newspaper photographer, cartoonist and illustrator before heading the Prince George Art Gallery in the mid 1980s. Moving to Wells plunged her into painting full time and she never looked back.

"Art gives meaning to my life, and enables me to say in paint far better than I could in words what I need to say about my existence, and about the wonders of nature, in particular the landscape of this country."

An intuitive painter, her art is as much about paint, texture, form and colour as it is about the subject.

Realism has never been a goal, and she counts among her influences abstract painters such as Gordon Smith, Mark Rothko and Richard Diebenkorn

Marie’s art continued to flourish on Vancouver Island, where she would regularly paint en plein air with other Victoria painters. She now lives in White Rock. 

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