ShawneeDispatch.com

Photo by Caroline Boyer

Karie Parsons only put brush to canvas for the first time in November, but the Shawnee artist is now preparing for her first solo show.

Taking up painting to fill an artistic void in her life, Parsons found her muses were many and her paintings prodigious. After just five months of painting, she secured her first solo show, "The Emergence Project," this month in a local gallery.

"It's all been so easy; there hasn't been that angst of artistry," Parsons said. "I feel like I'm cheating the system."

With an art minor in college, she was familiar with artistic techniques and history, just not the practice. But she had her own way of expressing her creativity.

She recently changed careers and moved into selling real estate. Working on commission meant Parsons had to find something to occupy her free time in between showing homes. But she found there wasn't anything to fill those empty stretches. So she turned to her religion.

"I asked God, 'Can you give me something to do?'" she said.

The eventual answer that came to her was to paint, she said, and her works have flowed easily since then.

"It's happening so quickly, it just has to be a God thing," she said.

She has found signs of success quickly, selling two of her paintings and working under commission for a local insurance office. She also submitted work and was accepted to the local arts publication, Present Magazine.

That led to her biggest breakthrough. While visiting the 6th Street Gallery, 1017 N. 6th St., in the Kansas City, Kan., YWCA, she saw the card of a woman she had worked with at the magazine. She mentioned it to the curator, Patrick Alexander, who took an immediate interest and asked if she'd like to submit her work for a show with other local artists.

She put her works on a Web site, and soon Alexander called and asked her to do a solo show.

Parsons' show will open Friday with a reception from 6 to 8 p.m. and will be on display through June 6. Her work also may be viewed online at thedb.com/karie.