Gwen Bell painted and drew for pleasure throughout her life, but it wasn’t until she was divorced with two young children that she decided to turn her passion into a career. Despite having no formal art training, she was hired to paint for a greeting card company for a few years. Before long, she became a freelance commercial artist, a career she kept for the next fifteen years. Bell then forayed into the business of painting fine art murals in homes and businesses, which she did for a decade. Since then, she has been able to paint solely for her own pleasure.

After twenty-five years of painting for “someone else” Bell finds that a “blank canvas can be intimidating.” To find inspiration, she takes her camera wherever she goes, looking for interesting subjects or images that she can paint. Lately, she has been drawn to “the mundane,” painting things that most people would not look twice at on the street. Bell can turn these fleeting sights into stunning paintings that are much harder to forget.