Artist's Passion for Painting Fantasies Sustains Her Through the Pains of Aging

A photo of Sheila Wolk’s apartment on W 87th Street. (Credit: Lauren Hartley)

Sheila Wolk sat at a desk in a corner of her lamp-lit Upper West Side studio apartment, on the second floor of a pre-war building, a half-block from Central Park. She has lived and worked here as an artist for 42 years. Wolk, 77, once had thick, curly dark brown hair — it was often how people recognized her. It has since grown thin, gray and straighter. Her former 5-foot-10 stature has shrunk to 5-foot-8.

Wolk, who sells her paintings of fantasy art directly to collectors from a website, has suffered a series of accidents and mishaps. Exposure to spray paint left her temporarily blind and deaf, and she has only partially regained her senses. She has developed an allergy to antibiotics and mobility challenges that are common at older ages. She lives in a lot of pain. So, Wolk leaves her rent-stabilized apartment on West 87th Street only a couple of times a year for doctor appointments, relying on delivery services, help from her neighbors and in-home visits from a physical therapist.

“You’d wonder, why am I still alive,” she said in an interview. “Because I have a passion for what I do, my art. If you’ve got a passion and you’ve got a profession that you love, it’s not work anymore. It’s your lifestyle. And that’s what keeps me alive, even now.”

Wolk’s paintings feature mythical creatures — fairies, mermaids, angels — set in imaginative natural scenes. She paints with pastels on canvas, creating pieces that range from 4 feet to 6 feet tall. Her characters often appear in fields of flowers or surrounded by fish, butterflies or birds, seemingly drawn to magical qualities. The warm color palettes, punctuated by touches of darkness, evoke dreamlike scenes that reflect Wolk’s imagination. The works are priced on her website from $5,000 to $150,000.

Her apartment is crammed with paintings, art supplies and books, as well as preserved dead butterflies and figurines of mythical creatures that serve as models for her subjects.

On a recent afternoon, Wolk faced away from a television tuned to MSNBC and typed on her desktop computer with bright red fingernails, responding to emails, while frequently turning around to catch snippets of news.

Being housebound, Wolk misses “the warmth of the sun,” she said. “I miss walking across the apartment and no pain.”

The artist continuously switches between eyeglasses, depending on what she is doing. Wolk swallowed a Tums antacid tablet, then another. “Dinner,” she joked.

When Wolk was 66, she fell while returning home from shopping, injuring both wrists and triggering a decline in health and mobility.

Wolks recalls a visit to a hair salon shortly after the accident.

“I looked at my beautician. I started crying. She goes, ‘What’s wrong, sweetheart?’ And I said, ‘My life is over.’ And I was right, it was over. At that point, I had to deal with a new me, and I had to talk myself into being old. That is not easy. I had to surrender everything that made me feel young and bury it.”

In October, Wolk completed a painting she thinks might be her last. Four-and-a-half feet tall, titled “Whispers,” it has taken her 19 years to complete.

A photo of Wolk’s painting “Whispers.” (Courtesy: Sheila Wolk)

“Your whispers are your guardian angels telling you you’re about to fall into danger,” Wolk said. “They’re telling you to stop, to pause. And if we don’t listen, we’re going to get hurt.”

Wolk said she ignored such whispers warning against leaving her apartment the day of her fall 11 years ago.

When she finished “Whispers,” she said her agent told her it would never sell because of the nudity.

Wolk recalled replying: “The world will remember me from this painting when I’m dead. Not because of the nudity, but because of my story that goes behind it.”

The work sold immediately. The price? “None of your business,” Wolk said.

Wolk grew up in Washington, where her father was a grocer and her mother a socialite. She picked up drawing as a childhood pastime while her nanny cooked dinner. Wolk said she attended George Washington University’s Corcoran School of the Arts & Design and, at 19, moved to New York where she began work as an art director at a pharmaceutical medical advertising agency.

After getting her foot in the door of the art world, she transitioned to sports art, winning the Sports Artist of the Year award in 1987 from the American Sport Art Museum and Archives at the United States Sports Academy in Daphne, Ala. She received the honor for her work on the 1988 Winter Olympics and the 1984 World Series. For the past two decades, she has found her life’s passion painting fantasy art.

“At the time she was named Sport Artist of the Year, that was probably a really high honor, and especially for a woman,” said Nancy Raia, artist in residence at the United States Sports Academy.

“She certainly can draw people very, very well, and her work is nicely, beautifully done,” Raia said. “She has a good execution of skill, but I’m also thrilled to hear that she’s transferred to something else that she loves doing and is selling for her.”

Andrea Sullivan, 71, a retired athletic director and teacher in the Philadelphia Public Schools, wrote to Wolk after being impressed by the painting, “Ecstasy,” which was posted on eBay. Sullivan met the artist in 2011 and commissioned her to paint a few similar pieces with mermaids that now decorate her home in Philadelphia.

When Sullivan is tired or feeling low, she will sit down, put her feet up, dim the lights and “let the lighting wash over the paintings,” she said. “It just feels like, ah. Your life gets immediately improved when you look at her art.”

The two women stay in touch by phone and have developed a friendship that has become more important over time.

“Because of our age, attrition takes care of a lot of support networks around you,” Sullivan said. “You have to lean on those who you can lean on and who’s left.”

Wolk, sitting in her apartment, reflected on her career in art. She played videos of old television interviews, and scrolled through photos of gallery exhibitions and collections featuring her paintings of famous athletes.

Reminiscing about the past leads Wolk to confront what the future holds.

“The thing that bothers me the most about life is loving it so much that it makes death feel unfair,” she said. “How do you say goodbye to something you love so much?”

Wolk turned back to her computer and popped another Tums in her mouth. “Dinner.”