Storm fulfills her calling by painting
"Life is too short to worry about the things that have happened to you."
Storm Barkas, a promising young artist from Hoedspruit, says she has realised that one needs to fulfill one’s calling a after few people close to her passed away. Today nothing is better than the freedom she experiences when painting in her room. “I did a little work overseas and when I returned, I got involved with my parents’ anti-poaching company. “In 2020, during the pandemic, I decided to follow my childhood passion for art and started painting,” she says.
“I just absolutely love spending my days in my room painting sunsets and landscapes.” She says as long as she can work with her hands, she is happy. “I have always wanted to be creative, so being able to spend my days being creative has been one of my biggest rewards; and it is stress-free!” Warren Cary of the Warren Cary Wildlife Gallery in Hoedspruit has been mentoring Barkas. “Warren and Steph have been encouraging and guiding me and giving me that extra motivation. I need to focus and work hard.”
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She says she is very critical of her work and sometimes spends too much time on a piece to get it as perfect as possible. “I also get distracted easily because I enjoy helping out.” At one stage she had two to three different jobs at once. “I was teaching in The Oaks and realised that I need to stop dividing myself into doing multiple things and put my time and energy into one thing until that is complete.” She says the one person she truly looks up to, is her mother, Leigh.
“If there is anyone in this world that has persistence, passion, love, and kindness in her heart and is just joyful, it would be my mom. “It does not matter if she is having a good or bad day, she will find a way to make it bright and is always out there looking after people,” she adds. Her supporters are her partner Alex, her mother, and friends she has known since childhood. Currently, she is working on an oil painting and the wall at the entrance of Hoedspruit. Her dream is to one day have a place where she would be able to teach, she concludes.
