instructor

Dixie Orriss was born in Alberta, Canada in 1961. Growing up, she always had a passion for drawing, but decided to take another route and worked with show jumping and dressage horses in Canada and the United States before studying and graduating from Biological Sciences and the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology. Orriss then worked at the University of Alberta in a Diabetes Research Lab and began studying art in her spare time. After taking a drawing course through the Alberta Art Gallery, she decided to take art a little more seriously and studied classical European and non-traditional methods of drawing, painting and sculpture under J. Birnie from 1987 to 1992. It was at this time that Orriss also studied painting, design, art history and life drawing with the University of Lethbridge and Grant MacEwan College. After teaching art part time she opened Pygmalion School of Fine Art in 1992 in St. Albert, Alberta and has been operating the school ever since.

Currently, Orriss a member of the Visual Arts Alberta Association, the Arts and Heritage Foundation, and is an Active Member of the Federation of Canadian Artists. Orriss works primarily in acrylic, oil, pastel, watercolor and charcoal. Her work has been exhibited in Canada, the United States, France and Italy as well as corporate and private collections.