Evidence of the change sits outside on a patch of lush green grass.

Inside Cori Creed’s home studio there are no clues.

The tall white walls play host to huge vibrant landscape paintings that suck in the sunlight through a row of floor to ceiling windows. The concrete floor is splattered with red, blue, green, yellow paint, remnants of creative moments.

Amid the droplets a lone, small radio sits on the cement, dialed in to CBC.

The space is calm and cool.

But just past the window you can see it — a red, blue and yellow tricycle tipped on its side on the grass.

“Four days after having my first son I was painting,” the West Vancouverite says.

Creed has always felt an urge to have multiple art projects on the go. When she wasn’t painting, she was piecing together stain glass or working on design projects.

“I thought ‘Oh kids, that is just another thing,’” she jokes before rolling her eyes.

Now with two sons — one four years old and the other two — time for experimentation has been cut. Creed’s learning to be flexible, while also staying focused.

For the last six years, painting has been the former graphic designer’s full-time career. She paints her pieces while the oil’s wet, giving her about a week’s timeframe. A composition is sketched out, but the layers of colours and textures that take shape on the canvas are spontaneous.

“I end up throwing a lot of paintings out,” Creed says, before explaining she needs to be in the same emotional space throughout the painting.

Kids can make that a challenge, she notes. And there’s also the added guilt she feels when discarding a painting knowing it was a week away from Levi and Kai for nothing.

“(My parents) have been rocks,” she says, thankful for their donated babysitting.

For the last six months Creed’s worked on her upcoming exhibit, which opens Saturday, Aug. 15, at Buschlen Mowatt Gallery.

Rolling her right shoulder, Creed says she’s been busy.

“I have always liked painting big, you get a big range of motion then,” she said.

Creed’s latest show explores the surface of paint on canvas, playing with the lumps and bumps in branches and smooth face of granites.

Growing up under the Lions, Creed is attracted to nature’s beauty.

The wilderness has a way of putting everything in perspective, she says. Peering out over giant mountains or a vast ocean, problems seem to shrink, Creed adds.

“I find that, like most people who tend to be more creative, I can be a little imbalanced,” she half jokes. “Getting out were you can’t see anything man-made makes me calm.”

Creed’s take on the wilderness will be on display at the Buschlen Mowatt Gallery from Aug. 15 to Sept. 15. The gallery is located at 1445 West Georgia St. For more information visit www.buschlenmowatt.com.

raldous@northshoreoutlook.com