Sometimes becoming an artist begins with something very simple: finding the right teacher at the right time.

For Marjorie Mae Broadhead, that teacher was Sharon Lynn Williams.

When I met with Marj and Sharon recently, I knew the basics of their story. Sharon had once been Marj’s teacher, both had built their own artistic careers, and over time they had become friends. What I didn’t fully understand was how naturally one part of their relationship had grown into the next. What began in a classroom gradually became personal mentorship, leading to a very precious close friendship. Now they have become each other’s champion, all while sharing a passion to learn, and growing through experimentation and then sharing their discoveries with each other

Marj first met Sharon through a mixed media class Sharon was teaching with Chinook Learning. An acquaintance had recommended the class, and Marj decided to give it a try, even though she admits she knew very little about art at the time.

“It was quite a stretch for me,” she remembers.

Apparently, it was exactly the right kind of stretch. Sharon was Marj’s first art teacher as an adult, and Marj was immediately hooked. “She had so much knowledge, and she was willing to share it with me,” Marj says. She went on to take virtually every class Sharon was offering!

Listening to Sharon talk about those early days, it becomes clear why the relationship worked so well. Marj was incredibly curious and hungry to learn. She listened, asked questions, and, when she didn’t understand something, she was willing to say so. Rather than quietly following instructions and becoming frustrated with the result, she would talk it through, try again and stay with the problem until she understood what she was seeing and why. “That is a rare quality in students these days”, Sharon relates.

Sharon describes her as an ideal student, not because everything came easily, but because Marj was willing to work through the often uncomfortable part of learning.

That willingness to stay curious became one of the foundations of both their artistic developments.

Learning to See

One of the things I loved most about hearing Sharon talk about teaching was her philosophy that a good teacher should not create students who simply paint like the teacher.

Sharon believes strongly in fundamentals. Artists need to understand colour, light, shadow, composition and how materials behave. But learning those things are simply tools to bring to their unique vision. The ultimate goal is to give an artist enough understanding to begin making their own choices.

As Sharon put it, “The goal is to learn to see, not to copy.”

She talked about students arriving in class with beautiful photographs and wanting to reproduce them exactly. But a photograph already exists. The opportunity in painting is to look beyond simply copying what is there, but to notice where the light falls, understand the shadows, study the relationships between colours and shapes, and then use that knowledge to make something that shows their own personal interpretation.

Often, Sharon would encourage students to put the photograph away entirely and trust what they had seen using the tools they had learned.

That philosophy stayed with Marj.

“She never wanted me to copy her style,” Marj says. “She encouraged me to explore.”

Sharon introduced her to different mediums and techniques, but she also gave her room to make mistakes, follow her instincts and begin figuring out what kind of artist she wanted to become.

When I asked Marj where she still sees Sharon’s influence in her work today, she didn’t point to a specific technique or subject matter. Instead, she talked about freedom: the freedom not to be boxed in.

For Marj, a painting does not always need to be completely planned before it begins. It can develop on the canvas. She can respond to what is happening, make a mark, change direction, step back and reconsider. She shares Sharon’s mantra, ‘what would happen if…’ Over time, her own artistic language began to emerge through bold colour, mark-making and a willingness to trust her intuition.

Sharon recognized that instinct in her early on. She remembers Marj being willing to work on large canvases without being overly afraid of ruining them. Rather than freezing because a choice might be wrong, she was prepared to make try something and see where it led.

“If her gut says, ‘I should do it,’ then do it,” Sharon says.

That willingness to experiment continues in Marj’s work today. Recently, she began incorporating stripes into some of her paintings. Sharon makes it clear this idea had nothing to do with her.

“The stripes are her own genius work,” Sharon says with obvious delight.

Marj tried them, liked what was happening and continued exploring. For Sharon, that kind of experimentation is exactly what she hopes to see in a student. A teacher’s success is not measured by whether a student paints like the teacher; it is watching that artist develop enough confidence to go somewhere entirely new.

The Courage to Try

There was another important gift Sharon gave Marj along the way: the confidence to put herself forward.

Sharon encouraged her to join the Calgary Chapter of the Federation of Canadian Artists and later to submit her work for jurying for signature membership. For a developing artist, putting work in front of others to be evaluated can feel intimidating, but Sharon helped Marj understand the process and encouraged her to take the risk.

“She gave me courage to try,” Marj says.

That simple sentence captures so much of their relationship.

Encouragement does not guarantee success. It simply helps someone become brave enough to find out what might happen.

As Marj continued painting, people began responding to her work. They liked it, connected with it and eventually began buying it. That response marked a shift for her. Painting became more than something she enjoyed doing; it began to feel like an important part of her identity and, eventually, a career she wanted to pursue seriously.

Sharon continued to challenge her along the way, but she is also quick to avoid taking credit for Marj’s achievements.

“I am not taking credit for Marj’s success,” she says. “Her willingness to take what moved her and make it her own made her work truly original.”

There is truth in both sides of that equation. A mentor can open a door, but the student still has to walk through it.

Marj did.

She worked, experimented, asked questions, learned, submitted her work, accepted feedback and kept going. That spirit is what has contributed to Marj’s huge success, Sharon says proudly.

From Student to Colleague

There was no single moment when Sharon stopped being the teacher and Marj stopped being the student. The change happened gradually as their artistic lives began to overlap in new ways.

They were submitting work to some of the same exhibitions, attending workshops together and taking part in critique groups. Sharon was no longer always the person at the front of the room with the answers. Sometimes she and Marj were both students, learning from someone else. Sharon loves that Marj was willing to follow her to take workshops from some of Sharon’s favourite mentors.

For Marj, entering exhibitions alongside Sharon with their own original work was one of the moments when she began to recognize that the relationship had changed.

“We were working as peers,” she says.

Eventually, something even more telling happened: Marj began critiquing Sharon’s work, which Sharon truly welcomed.. After years of asking Sharon for feedback on her own paintings, Marj had developed enough confidence and experience to look at Sharon’s work and make suggestions of her own.

“She can tell me what’s not working and make suggestions,” Sharon says.

There is something wonderfully full-circle about that. The student who once needed encouragement to submit her work had become an artist whose opinion her former teacher valued.

Marj has also gone on to teach and mentor artists herself. She still uses demonstrations in her classes because she remembers how helpful they were when she was learning from Sharon, and Sharon has continued encouraging her growth as a teacher as well.

For Sharon, seeing Marj teach, sell her work and receive professional recognition has been deeply rewarding. She speaks proudly of Marj’s achievements with the Federation of Canadian Artists and of the confidence she has built over the years.

Marj, meanwhile, is equally clear about the role Sharon played in accelerating that growth.

“I don’t believe I would have developed as an artist as quickly as I did without Sharon’s friendship and mentorship,” she says. “She had travelled the road a very long time before me, and I received the benefit of her vast art knowledge.”

Somewhere along that road, mentorship became a prized friendship.

Finding a Place at Leighton

Leighton Art Centre has also been woven through both of their artistic journeys.

For Sharon, the connection goes back decades. She remembers arriving at Leighton as a relatively new artist and participating in the Clothesline Art Sale with a friend. Having a place where she could present her work to the public mattered enormously, as did the encouragement she received from people at the Centre.

Former Executive Director Paula Swan was one of those people who encouraged Sharon to continue developing her career, and Leighton eventually became more than a place where she exhibited. It became a place where she shared her knowledge.

Over the years, Sharon taught hundreds of students at Leighton, including classes in plein air painting and travel sketching. Even now, she occasionally encounters former students who proudly show her travel sketchbooks they continue to use. “I love that my students have a way to creatively tell their own stories of where they have been and what has been important to them”

Her message to those students was always straightforward: everyone can learn. Skill comes with much practice, and confidence grows from skill.

Interestingly, teaching at Leighton also helped build Sharon’s own confidence.

“Leighton allowed me to teach, and it upped my confidence and credibility,” she says.

The Centre provided opportunities to exhibit, sell work, teach, meet other artists and become increasingly established within the arts community. Because Leighton had played such an important role in her own career, Sharon naturally wanted Marj to have some of those same opportunities.

“Leighton did so much for me,” she says. “And I wanted Leighton to help her as well.”

For Marj, being welcomed into the Leighton artist community was an important milestone.

“It was a great honour to be welcomed by the Leighton Art Centre,” she says. “It was a confidence booster.”

Today, when she talks about Leighton, she describes a sense of belonging. The landscape certainly plays a part in that…the foothills, changing skies and extraordinary views are difficult to ignore. But both women also spoke about the importance of the community itself.

Artists meet other artists here. Students meet teachers. Volunteers get to know the people behind the work they help hang, promote and sell. Conversations happen that may lead to a class, an exhibition, a new friendship or simply the reassurance that someone else understands the strange and sometimes uncertain process of making art.

For Sharon, that remains one of Leighton’s most important roles. She believes artists need opportunities to show their work and grow their careers, but they desperately need encouragement and connection.

In her own experience, Leighton provided both.

The Art of Encouragement

The more I listened to Sharon and Marj talk, the more I realized that encouragement quietly runs through almost every part of their story.

Someone encouraged Marj to take Sharon’s first class. Sharon encouraged her to keep learning, to join the FCA, to submit her work, to take creative risks and to trust her instincts. People who responded to and purchased Marj’s work gave her confidence, too. Leighton gave both women opportunities to teach, exhibit, sell and connect with others.

Now Marj is passing some of that encouragement on to the artists she teaches.

What I love about their story is that neither woman presents artistic growth as something magical or effortless. Marj worked hard. She experimented. She listened. She asked questions. She made paintings that worked and almost certainly plenty that didn’t. She kept learning.

As Sharon puts it, “Marj knew she wanted a career in art, and she went for it.”

Yet Marj also understands that having someone a little further down the road made that journey easier to navigate.

That may be the most beautiful part of mentorship. A teacher can share what they have learned, offer reassurance when confidence wavers, and encourage someone to take the next step, but eventually the goal is for the student to find their own way.

That is exactly what happened here.

Sharon helped Marj learn to see. Marj took that and developed her own voice. Over time, the student became a colleague, the colleague became a friend, and now both continue to learn from one another.

Maybe that is one of the best things about being an artist.

You never completely finish learning.

You simply keep finding new ways to see.

Connect with Sharon Lynn Williams on her website or shop her work at Leighton Art Centre, and connect with Marjorie Mae Broadhead on her website or shop her work at Leighton Art Centre.