Striking a fine balance by Joel H. Vega Dammam, Jan.8 CHANCES are you have heard her well-modulated voice on Saudi TV or detected the graceful manner. In the grinding, "pressure cooker" world of TV broadcasting Sharlene McLearon remains unruffled as she strikes a balance between a hectic TV career and the more solitary, private pursuits in fine arts. Since 1988 and for the last six years, Sharlene was the mainstay for two prime time programmes on the Saudi TV Channel 2 where she wrote and presented 35 programmes for Woman's World and 150 weekly Zoom-In episodes. Aside from sixty Ramadan Cuisine programmes, she was also involved in various TV topics of national interest and a National Day special feature in 1991 and 1992. Today, Sharlene and veteran TV director Dahash M. Al-Dahash have teamed up to produce from the Eastern Region, the new Tuesday evening prime time, 30-minute programme Spotlight, which tackles a wide variety of subjects ranging from environmental conservation, music, health, arts, to popular music. Canadian-born Sharlene gets a lot of morale support from husband Brock
way back since they first arrived in the Kingdom 10 years ago, but the way
she copes with the manifold pressures of TV work reveals the reaffirming
way Sharlene faces the challenges thrown her way: Interviews with local luminaries, members of royalty to Pulitzer Prize and Nobel winners make up the gloss of TV glamour, but to Sharlene it is also and opportunity to accent the positive. And her inherent gift to identify herself with the audience comes in handy in the tough TV network competition. Sharlene however, encountered TV work as pure chance. "My work as a painter was being featured in a Woman's World programme in 1988 and when there was an available slot for a TV presenter they asked me if I'm interested to host an episode. "I said why not," Sharlene recounted. Since then Sharlene remains rooted in TV work and although she never planned a foray into the broadcasting field, communicating comes "naturally" to her. Right after graduating from an Ontario nursing school, Sharlene spent the next 15 years intermittenly studying the basics of art in Canada, Paris, and Italy in the mid-1980's. It brought her to the Paris American Academy, the Florance-based Centro Europa Della Terracotta under the tutelage of Silvia Fossati and to sculpture John Sadler at the Ottawa School of Art. Before her intensive art history studies, Sharlene lectured at the National Gallery of Canada where she specialized in fine art appreciation for children and conducted gallery tours. In Riyadh she taught an after-school art programme at the Saudi Arabian International School.
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Solo exhibits of her work, ranging from paintings, mixed media, sculpture to installations were variously held in Riyadh's International Gallery for Fine Arts, the American Community Services, at exhibits in Ottawa, Al-Khobar, Dammam, and a 1988 group show with Saudi women artists in Bonn, Germany, sponsored by the Saudi government. At her Al-Khobar residence, paintings in vivid, bold colours hang on the walls. Subjects often captured by Sharlene's "expressionist" brush include Saudi Arabian landscapes, portraits, African motifs, to more recent work inspired by current political events.Her paintings, rather than impressing the viewer with intricate detail, seep into one's awareness with its bold sweeps of colours, shapes, crude thick outlines and recurring mythical motifs that convey hope, artistic freedom, and glimpses into collective grief or joy. An agitating mural on the Tiananmen Squre tragedy confirms an artist's vicarious, re-creative powers, and shows Sharlene's keen faculty to depart from the "safe", conceptual styles. Banks, local museums, private collectors, to members of Saudi Royalty are among patrons of Sharelene's work. In 1984 Unicef-New York shortlisted four of her Arabian works for use in greeting cards, and in July 1993 the National Museum for Women in Arts in Washington, D.C. opened a file for her work in their archives. For a busy career woman with three grown-up children, Sharlene's reasuring, placid manner is "second skin", that conceals a tenacious nature anchored in her personal belief in the unchanging virtures of a positive outlook in life. "Life is not easy for anyone and I learned here that it's really essential not to be judgmental. No matter what you do in life it has an effect. A positive effect. In my art or in TV work, integrity to me, at anytime, is really important," say Sharlene. Sculptor, painter, TV personality, and a poet (her poetry were published by local magazines and newspapers), cosmic forces clearly shone through the spare lines in an undated poem titled " Did You Taste the Wind?" To quote a few passages: Rock/Sand/Curved line, trees, bush/Birds/Wind/Sun... Did you listen to the rocks?/ Did you hear the sun? Alone.../ I sit on this desert Full of awe/Starry night Striking a fine balancing between two disparate worlds can be a tightrope act. And amid the tumult of haste, Sharlene's voice is clear - distinct with its innate grace and sensitivity. |
