The Edmonton Examiner Article

When Kaytlyne Dewald packed up her booth at the Fringe Festival last Sunday, she had few of her pieces take back home.

The Edmonton-based painter — whose personal signature is realistic representation of pop and nerd culture icons like Harry Potter, Dr. Who and the cast of Game of Thrones — has been attending the Fringe for the last three years. Each year she’s done better than the last, she said.

As of six months ago, she has been creating these pieces full-time.

Dewald has been painting since she could remember, but her paintbrush has been recreating famous and infamous fictional characters for 10 years. The Morinville native got her start selling her paintings at the St. Albert Farmer’s Market.

Dewald started off doing black and white recreations, though she has since expanded to include colour, and to use pages from books and comic books in the background of her subjects.

The draw to paint these characters comes from a place close to home for Dewald.

“My parents bought a movie store when I was in Grade 2, so I was pretty much raised in a movie store, which is definitely a lot of my influence. I was also just an avid comic book and novel reader since I was quite young. I would rather be home on a Friday night reading a book or watching a movie,” she said.

“I don’t paint anything that I haven’t read, played, watched. So pretty much everything here is my favourite thing — but particularly, fantasy is my first love, so Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Game of Thrones.”

She creates the paintings in batches of around 10 and it takes anywhere from five to 25 hours spread over a week to finish a painting.

Dewald has difficulty painting hands and faces, though she enjoys the latter.

In the future, Dewald hopes to open her own gallery, ideally on the124th Street promenade, and hopes to help other aspiring artists through the location.