The Green Bough Studio | Zulis Yalte

Nestled in a forest grove, The Green Bough Gallery is dedicated to presenting the Fine Art of Zulis Yalte at her home property on Gabriola Island. The small Gallery extends the display space into a Milagros Memorial Art Garden and a covered outdoor area in front of the studio. Visitors remark on how peaceful they find the indoor/outdoor viewing spaces. “It’s so peaceful here that I feel calm and want to take my time with the art. It is such a contrast to our troubled world.” Others comment on the art being uplifting and giving a sense of peace or joy.

In the Gallery space live acrylic, watercolour, oil/cold wax and encaustic paintings or sculptures in stone, wood, cement, wire and clay. Many are mixed media works. Recently, Zulis has been exploring precious metal and gemstone techniques, now integrated into her stone sculptures like: The Dreamer (an amethyst third eye and white zirconium in the basalt base). A resident painted Snowy Owl in chicken wire flies in the firs as protector over the Gallery scene.

Growing in the Comox Valley, in a family fraught with difficulty and humour, Zulis describes her art as imbedded in her relationship with nature, dreams and the intuitive. The intuitive voice guides her whether carving a stone, painting an image or hand-building a clay mug. That voice has been part of Zulis since a child as she constructed, sang, drew, wrote and made ceremony to evolve today into the Cross-Disciplinary and Multi-media artist that she is. For instance her academic research concerns included performance art, film-making and conceptual art. Stories of the intuitive voice are written in some descriptions with various art pieces.

An award winning Artist and Nursing Scholar, Zulis, as a mature student, attended The Emily Carr College of Art & Design achieving scholarship standing with a commendation by the Principal. At the University of Victoria, Master of Nursing program, Zulis researched through her multiple art practices creating a Conceptual Figurative Installation: Border Crossings, that explored the nature of disabling illness. Her Thesis: The Song of the Soul, Transforming Disabling Illness through Art garnered an award for Excellence in Nursing Scholarship and Research. A member of the Honor Society in Nursing (Sigma), Zulis’ thesis was uploaded to the Sigma International Repository of Nursing Research and continues to be vigorously downloaded by researchers internationally. Thus, through her art, Zulis contributes to world health concerns.

Retired now, Zulis focuses on creative pursuits, her blessed cats, dog and garden. Zulis’ art is concerned with intuitive knowing, of being an energy form and the interface of this form with her explorations/relationships/understandings of the ordinary/non-ordinary worlds, consciousness and the multi-dimensional nature of being embodied. She describes a growing awareness through the years and realization, that all is interconnected, a part of the whole, accompanied by a deep sense of peace and awe that settles into the very bones and cells. Accompanying this realization, is the knowing, that everything is sacred, every blessed rock, bug, tree, human, every manifestation that is life. As serious as this sounds, humour is always near and ready to interject into the imagery, along with an inner music and love. She says, “The art guides me, I surrender to her call.”

Zulis’ art has been presented at shows in Vancouver; Victoria; Council Green, Kansas; multiple towns on Vancouver Island and Gabriola. Her work is held in private collections across Canada, the US, UK, Europe, India, New Zealand and Australia.

Visitors are warmly welcomed to come explore her art and world.