OUT OF THE WOODS: Speech at Hotel Ocho, Toronto, Feb. 5, 2017

Susan Wei Lee came into my boathouse studio this summer and asked me if I would like to display my art on the walls of her son and daughter-in-law’s delightful boutique hotel on Spadina.   Would I? Give me a date! And voila, here I am. Thank you, Susan, and Louise and Hamish for your hospitality and for this charming venue.

 

Thanks to all of you for coming out to see my show this afternoon. You are brave souls to face the Toronto traffic that makes me weak in the knees. We live down a 1.5 km gravel road, outside of Dorset. If we have to wait for two cars to pass at the end of the road, we turn to each other with alarm and say, “My, there is a lot of traffic today.”

 

Thank you, too for your interest in painting. A skill that has survived 40.000 years is indeed something to celebrate.

 

I am a painter. Can’t remember a day when I didn’t divide the world into patches of colour and texture, like the quilts that my Mennonite mother sewed together and tucked me under ever since the day I was born. “Every child is an artist. The problem is staying an artist when you grow up.” Picasso penned those words.

 

But I have been very fortunate. Not only do I still sleep under these inspiring, quilted masterpieces, I live in a sculpture garden, of a sorts. Not a permanent one made of marble or bronze. Mine changes every day ‘cause it’s made of snow. And, Boy, do we have snow!

 

The trees are bent down in graceful arches under massive mantles of white. Everything vertical wears a comical, tall hat – chimney, fence post, or shovel stuck in the snow. Gigantic waves of snow swoop over the face of buildings, not unlike an avant-guard hairdo.

 

This afternoon, I welcome you to a glimpse into rural Canada, a taste for which I trust today’s exhibition will give you. When we remember that 95% of our Canadian land mass is rural and yet 80% of Canadians are urban dwellers in the southern regions of our country, you begin to realize just how much space, how much wilderness we have north of our cities, all just a few hours north of Toronto. And it’s free! Canada may well be a progressive, urban, modern, industrial society, but the call of the wild always tugs deep within. In fact, I think Canadians are born with an interior compass that keeps steering them north.

 

You already know it. Why else would so many of you brave the traffic jams on Hwy 400 on summer weekends just to be able to skinny dip in a northern lake, to watch a sunset from a canoe or build a campfire in the woods.

 

My husband and I felt that pull so strongly that we quit our professions in teaching and chemistry in the 1989, packed our kids and our belongings in our car and headed for Dorset to live in our 480 sq. ft. cabin with no plumbing, no insulation. Clearly, we survived and have thrived, for we are still there. Eventually, we built a house – with plumbing.

 

It’s the beauty of nature that has held us captive. To wake up to Phoebe bird screaming out her name (your natural alarm clock), to lie flat on your back on a frozen lake to watch millions of stars shooting pell-mell across the sky above, to hear the deep groans and rumbles of the lake as it metamorphoses from liquid to solid, this is what keeps us up north. . It’s the playfulness, the challenge, the mystery of Nature that has helped me to stay an artist all my life.

 

To get around my back yard, you really need snowshoes. Not the modern aluminum brand from MEC, but the giant wooden bear paws or fish shapes that keep you afloat on the snow. They are the only way to break into the isolated, silent swamps with their eerie spikey tree trunks, crowned with cranes’ nests and tattooed with the imprints of the claws of hungry bears.

 

You kind of live on the edge as an artist. You’re an explorer. At least, that’s how Matisse defined artists.   Last summer, I wanted to paint an island on Kawagama Lk, where my husband’s construction crew was renovating an old log cabin. In the early morning mist, I waited for my ride at the end of the long public dock at Kawagama. I felt like Emily Carr, clutching my easel, paint box and canvas, peering out into the silence, alert for any sounds of a motor.

 

Out of the mist glided the old tin workboat, carrying three carpenters, caps on backwards, hunched over, hugging their hoodies. Once all aboard, the tin boat reared its bow and galloped across the water. We charged past inlets, islands, coves, and cabins, flew over the reflections of clouds and sky in the lake. That was a wonderful, carefree day, to roam and explore the island at my will, to pretend that I was Robinson Crusoe, stranded there with my paint box. The illusion never lasted long, ‘cause Charlie’s loon-like laughter would drift through the forest. The painting of birch logs that is hanging downstairs was done that day.

 

A couple of winters ago, a long-time employee of Algonquin Park, suggested we come camping with him -in January. It would get me into some pretty spectacular scenery in Algonquin, accessible only in winter. When we arrived at the head of a trail near the park’s East Gate, a fleet of old wooden boxes on skis, and leather tumplines awaited us. Harnessed up like a pack of huskies, we travelled over historic trails that the first white man recorded in 1827. At night, Craig lashed caber-size poles together, and tied on a Egyptian cotton tent while Doris wove a springy floor out of balsam branches. It was like I had jumped into a wardrobe and come out the back into a Tom Thomson painting.

 

It’s not always that idyllic when you go out plein air painting. That’s French for out of doors. Plein air painters take a portable easel out of the studio and into nature and paint directly from the scene before them, in order to capture the light and the colours. You paint fast, wet on wet. The paintings are very fresh and alive. It can be tricky ‘cause the light changes and so does the weather.

 

Like the time I had arranged for John Anderson to teach a weekend plein air painting workshop in Dorset in March and the temperature plummeted to the -20’s That’s when you haul out your fattest down coat and your wool long johns. No such thing as fashion. It always helps to paint in the winter with a group. You are less inclined to give up. So, I arranged the next workshop in balmy September. It poured rain!

 

People love to see artists painting outside, especially where they least expect to see a painter. They suddenly realize that maybe this place is beautiful. Like the motorcyclist who blasted past me on his Harley, jerked to a stop, and called “Hey, you shouldn’t be here! What are you doing in a dirty old place like this?” He ducked to get in right under my sun umbrella to have a closer look at the painting . And there we were, cheek to cheek , staring at the scene, and my painting of it. until he burst out laughing. “Hey, that’s beautiful! I’ve lived here all my life, but I never seen it beautiful like that. You’ve made my day.” He pumped my hand and thanked me over and over. As he mounted his Harley I heard him call out, “ Can’t wait to tell the others.” I wondered how long it would be before the whole Harley gang showed up to find beauty.

 

Apparently, it’s scientific, this thing about natural beauty generating feelings of awe that boost mental capabilities. Business Insider quotes a study that claims that people’s mental energy bounced back, even when they just looked at pictures of nature. (Pictures of city scenes had no such effect.)

 

Please take your time to look at the paintings on the two floors and along the staircase. There is usually a story behind each one. Most of the small paintings in this exhibition are done on location. The larger ones are painted in my little boathouse that overhangs the waterlilies on Shoe Lake. It’s pretty idyllic. As you can see from the tags, they are all for sale.   To purchase a painting, Brad will be happy to transact the sale and package it up for you, so you can take it home with you. You can always contact me, later, through my website as well. For anything too big to take away, we will arrange delivery.

 

I am so glad to be Canadian and to be able to live in a country where we are open to challenge, diversity and adventure, where we still have wilderness and the freedom to explore it. Despite the fact that Canadian life is getting faster, more high-tech, I think there will always be painters sneaking around the northern lakes and woods, in antique wooden snowshoes and canoes, and sleeping on balsam boughs – explorers who come out of the woods to bring our wilderness back to the cities to ground Canadians, to sustain them and to remind them of their natural inheritance, the envy of the world. It definitely is in our hearts. Go north, folks, go into the woods – by whatever means -physically or through art. I’ll see you there.

 

But first, I will enjoy visiting with you right here, around the table and the coffee station. I am open to any questions about the art.

 

Thank you so much again for coming.

 

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Camping In January in Algonquin Park

This weekend, I felt like I had fallen into a Group of Seven painting, not unlike the way C.S. Lewis’ and Madeleine L’Engle’s characters get to jump around into past and future eras. When I placed the heavy leather tumpline of a loaded toboggan across my chest, and leaned into the blowing snow, I got sucked into another era, one long before the combustion engine, tourists and Mountain Equipment Coop.

Leaning into the past

I’m just warning you, in case you decide to go winter camping with Craig and Doris MacDonald in Algonquin Park in the middle of January. No slick synthetics, and no  lightweight titanium snowshoes or tents on this trip. Nope. Lash on the old-fashioned babiche and wooden snowshoes with a few feet of lamp wick and follow the ancient trail that the first white man recorded in 1827 near the park’s East Gate, beyond the gargantuan virgin pines. It leads to Sunday Lake where you’ll find Craig, master winter camper and expert on Algonquin Park and on the old ways of the Natives and the traders. He comes from generations of northern postal carriers that were more comfortable in snowshoes battling a blizzard than you and I are in our slippers sitting by a fireplace sipping a latte.

We are eight people camping together in the snow. No slackers allowed. It’s a race against a setting sun. A rough, six foot chisel and two metal pails are handed to my son who heads for the lake. “Don’t forget to pile snow on the top of the filled pails so the water won’t slosh all over your legs. And don’t lose the chisel in the lake!” Doris yells out. Someone searches for firewood and bark. My husband and other son stagger out of the forest and into the campsite after retrieving caber-size poles that Craig lashes together to make a structure to which we tie the locally made Egyptian cotton tent. Before my dazzled eyes, the exact shape of the tent in Tom Thomson’s painting The Tent begins to take shape. It’s cream coloured, spacious and gracefully proportioned.

Doris is showing us how to weave a soft fragrant carpet of balsam boughs, the way the Native people do. Craig and Wayne, who still wears the traditional voyageur garb, hook up the stove whose skinny chimney pipe angles up through a metal square in the gable end of the tent. A fire is crackling and, in no time, the tent is heating up. A toboggan, placed in the centre of the tent, becomes our table. Wooden stakes that hold candles are driven into the ground. Soon, we are sitting in our T-shirts, eating home baked bread and chili and swapping stories of adventure and travel, especially tales of Craig’s interactions with the Natives in years gone by. Before I climb into my sleeping bag, I slip outside. The tent is glowing like an old-fashioned Aladdin lantern turned down low. The snow is hard and crisp and the temperature is dropping as the night darkens. It is dead silent and perfectly still.

So, this is how those Canadian painters did it a hundred years ago. Well, Tom Thomson, there’s still one painter who is thrilled to be camping,  your style, in 2014.

A Good Cure for Restlessness

It always happens every year, that irksome restlessness that comes after a period of too much stimulation. It seems to take me forever to calm down after all the excitement of Christmas when the house bulged with guests and rocked with music and merriment, and our bellies protruded with too much gourmet food.

The inner turmoil goes something like this.  “I really need to thoroughly clean the house now that everyone has left.  I’ve got to get working on my spring show of 101 small watercolours.  Maybe I should participate in the summer Muskoka Arts and Crafts show with my cards, after all.  That means painting at least six cards a days.  I’d like to start blogging again.  And, oh, Sarah left her cello here.  Should I take cello lessons?”

So, I end up doing nothing.  I am suspended like a hummingbird before a feeder, wildly whirling my wings but going nowhere, then, erratically sipping at this feeder and dashing off to that flower.  No matter how many firm talks I give myself about focus and self-discipline, and no matter how many noble quotes I read about success, I just can’t seem to get very far on any project.

Matters came to a climax this afternoon when I found myself rarely alone for a few hours on a Sunday. It was the perfect time to start blogging again.  A full pot of hot rooibos tea before me, and a blank Microsoft page open, I waited eagerly for the gates to creativity to swing open.   But, they didn’t.   I hadn’t a clue what to write about, just like I haven’t had a clue, since Christmas, what to paint on the enormous stack of blank canvasses in the corner of my studio.  With each passing minute, the anxiety increased.   It was time to take a walk.

My quiet country road weaves through the forest and traces the rugged contours of the Algonquin Highlands.   I couldn’t help noticing that a raccoon, a grouse, a mouse and a fox had, each, gone for a walk not long before me. Why, even a car had made a new tread pattern in the snow part way up the road before the driver lost his nerve and turned around. The top, wispy branches of the naked maples were gently sweeping the clouds to the side so I could enjoy glimpses of the startling blue sky.   A playful breeze pinched my cheeks and rattled the dry beech leaves clustered tenuously on saplings.  Nervous nuthatches fluttered noiselessly in the branches while a hairy woodpecker hammered relentlessly at a tree trunk until it offered up a bug.

I noticed, when I sat down again to my cold tea and computer, that the gates to creativity had mysteriously opened in my absence.  Ideas and words flowed easily and I was able to write.

For me, a brisk walk in nature is the best cure for just about anything.

Thank you, OAC

There are many reasons why I love Ontario – the great weather that is never monotonous, the low population that preserves wide expanses of nature, free health care,  low crime,  and the freedom women have to become what they want to become.  These are just a few of the reasons.

Today, however, I am particularly grateful for a feature of Ontario that most of you probably don’t even know exists.  Indeed, neither did I, until I took a course called Business Course for Artists at the Haliburton School of the Arts. I am grateful for the Ontario Arts Council.

OAC fosters and supports the arts in Ontario by awarding grants to Ontario artists.  I was the fortunate recipient of an exhibition grant this winter.  In my business course I learned about this grant.  So, when I was invited to exhibit my paintings at the Huntsville Public Library this fall (see previous blog ), I was able to go to OAC for help with the framing of all those paintings.

I had to send my application to a recommender gallery in Ontario, all of whose names are listed on the OAC website.  In my case, I applied to the Art Gallery of Peterborough.  It was this gallery that reviewed my work, my artistic statement, my art resume and the completed application forms.  The Art Gallery of Peterborough recommended me to OAC for one of their grants.   Naturally, I was thrilled to be recommended.

While the average Canadian is reluctant to spend money on the arts, at least we Ontario artists have a wonderful government organization that recognizes the importance of the arts and the contribution artists make to our identity and culture and are ready to help financially with some of the enormous costs of producing art.

Thank you, Ontario Arts Council, for your encouragement and for helping me with my exhibition.  Thank you for improving our quality of life by funding the arts.

If you are an artist in Ontario, check out the OAC website and the list of grants that it awards.  You just might be eligible for one.

From Cross Lake to Shoe Lake

Cross Lake to Shoe Lake 1981

Planting potatoes in June in Cross Lake, Manitoba, is a dangerous job,  especially in Katherine McKay’s garden.  She lives beyond the Sinclairs’ shack, close to the Narrows where the Nelson River bellows at the shriveled forest and the wind picks up speed for its morning charge through the town.

Raging like an angry bull, Katherine’s husband is leaning over the fence, shouting something unfriendly in Cree, then doubling over with laughter as he points at us gardeners in the enclosure. The villagers had warned us about him.  “He hates white people with a vengeance.”  No trace of Katherine who had ordered the garden.

Brad and I are on our honeymoon.  Book–blearied university students, sick of the stale atmosphere of libraries and labs, and looking for a summer of fresh air and adventure, we impulsively volunteered with a relief organization to create kitchen gardens with the Cree in order to promote local food production, healthy eating and active living, and to decrease dependency on the Hudson’s Bay Store.

Just days after our May wedding, the bush pilot dropped us off with a bag of seeds, rakes, hoes and a rotor tiller.  He promised to pick us up at the end of August, then rattled his plane up into the clouds and was gone.  Swarms of black flies descended to welcome us.  Nobody else.

But that was last month.  Right now, I am shivering in Katherine’s freshly tilled garden, despite three layers of sweaters on my back. But it’s a garden, another precious garden to add to our other three.

Gardens are not a real hot item on this reservation. We’ve tried everything to promote them: a booth in front of the Bay Store, radio announcements, community involvement.  It was only when we dressed up like a tomato and a cob of corn and paraded through town, waving our garden-promoting banner, that a few kind souls took pity on us and signed on.

This morning, however, something other than potato pieces was seeding itself –  a memory.  I recall another village in a forest –  also on a narrows.  Cedar Narrows, Brad had called it.   I visited Dorset two years ago with Brad and his family.  We stayed in a primitive cottage on Shoe Lake.   I did not connect with it then.  Recently moved back to Canada from Europe,  I secretly found the endless, Canadian wilderness terrifying and the cabin awfully dingy.   But here, half a continent away, Dorset and Shoe Lake are reconstructing themselves in my memory, in all of its quaintness and natural beauty.”

“Hey, Brad”, I holler through the wind. “I think I’d like your uncle’s cabin in Dorset now. Could we spend some weekends there this fall and winter?  Would your uncle Gord lend us the key?”

Well, I can quickly see that my comment is setting off firecrackers in Brad’s imagination..  It is taking immediate root and growing into an idea, a whole plan in his mind. Shoe Lake is his favourite place in the world, where he has spent all his summers since he was a baby

“Elizabeth, let’s post-pone our studies for a year. Move to the uncle Gord’s  cabin and spend the year learning about the bush, canoeing, hiking, and hunting, instead. We’ll have time to think, read, paint,  and pursue whatever we want.  We’ll live simply on our savings, get paying jobs next summer, then pick up our university studies,  refreshed.  Anyway, I don’t know if engineering is right for me.

Our reckless and spontaneous plan warms us to the core.  The  Dorset Venture becomes a beacon of light that illuminates every activity with purpose.  Suddenly it is important to learn about survival and the ways of the bush from our Cree neighbours.   We borrow Mother Earth News magazines from George, the Metis, and start eating lambs quarters at lunch and catch fish from the Nelson.   I read about the benefits of cattail silk and sew it into my sleeping bag for warmth, that is,  before I notice the tiny worms in the silk.    After one week, when we feel totally sure about our plan, we phone home.

“What? You’ve gone mad with love.”  “Finish your education first.”  “We don’t like that plan at all.” were the responses.   Uncle Gord was the worst.  “Old Charlie Bean froze in his sleep up there.  Could happen to you.  You could burn the cabin down and no one would even know.  Neither of you are familiar with wood-stoves.  If something happened to you kids up there, I’d carry that guilt around for the rest of my life. “

But, in the fall, he hands over the key when we offer $60.00 a month to rent the cabin and assure him that we’ll keep an eye on his own big cottage.

One cold, October evening, Brad gallantly carries me over the threshold and sets me down in the middle of an uninsulated, dark and damp, mice-infested shack with no running water, except for what is leaking through the holes of the roof and the broken chimney. I hear a strain in Brad’s voice as he welcomes me to my first home.  No surface is without mouse droppings.  Night is falling.  My quivering candle guides me to a musty bed in the corner and I crawl in,  button-lipped. Before I fall asleep,  a mouse runs down my leg.   The luster to our dream is starting to fade.

All of that happened thirty-two years ago.  We cleaned, polished, and patched, that cabin, hauled water, built an outhouse, and made a warm, happy home.  We had a fabulous year and learned a great deal about ourselves and each other, but it will be the subject of another blog.

We did, indeed, go back to our formal studies at university,  and on to our professions, but  we vowed we would return to Dorset to raise our family.  Six years later, we bought the lot with the cabin from Uncle Gord.  Two years after that, we quit our professions and moved back into that cabin with a toddler, Katherine and a newborn, Sarah Jane.   But that story will also have to wait.

Pink Shoes

It’s a rare event that I cave in to buying something frivolous, just for myself.  I have a big, growing family involved in music lessons, a home, a business of my own, my husband’s business.  There is never anything left for foolish indulgence.

The bright pink shoes on the display table were made of the softest leather, leather lined and leather soled.  They were my size and they were on sale. I imagined myself wearing them on Easter Sunday, with my fuschia-coloured dress. I pictured them, casual style, with tight jeans and a bright shirt.  I felt them moulding perfectly to my feet as I met clients in my studio/gallery.   They were like two bright spring tulips in my garden, like two punchy blobs of paint on my palette.  I left the store and dreamed of those shoes for a month.

I blame the barrel for my weakness for unusual shoes.   I must have been eight when my father announced after supper that he had a surprise for us.  We were to wait for it in the living room.  I heard a distant rumbling coming closer to us down the long hallway.  Dad rolled the barrels into the living room, popped off the lids and dumped out the contents all over the living room floor.  Shoes, hundreds of leather shoes, poured out – red, pink, shiny patent black, pointed, squared-toed,  buckled, laced, buttoned, strapless shoes.  It was raining shoes!  Shoes flooded the floor.  The river of shoes flowed down the hallway.

“Help yourselves!”  my father magnanimously offered with a delighted chuckle as my mother gasped in astonishment.  “Harold, what have you done?”

While my siblings and I charged in like hungry children on a plateful of doughnuts, our father explained how the shoe store in town was closing and the owner had offered Father a deal — $5 a barrel of shoes.  It was the ’60s and Father had a big family and was the principal of a private college.  He often had students in need.  So, he bought the whole lot.

But there was one catch.  There were no two shoes that matched exactly.   Some came pretty close, but the shade of brown was slightly different or the buckle on the left shoe was bigger, or the right shoe had two straps instead of one or the left shoe was size 5 and the right was size 7.  It wasn’t that noticeable if you didn’t stand at attention, feet touching.

From then on, whenever I needed a new pair of shoes, I went to the barn instead of the shoe store and rummaged around for a  passable pair.  Often, I had to polish them to make them match better.  Whenever Father’s students or our own friends came over, we would casually offer them a new pair of shoes as if were a glass of water. It was always a frenzied treasure hunt to find the closest match and the best entertainment we could offer our guests.  Over the years the cache of shoes dwindled until the last of them went up in flames the night the barn burned down.

One thing I learned from that barrel of shoes, is flexibility.   You can make do with whatever you have.   With a bit of imagination and some shoe polish you can make things work.  You can put up with a little discomfort for style.

The pink shoes were still there last week – the very last pair on the sale table  They were a little tight, but I knew from experience that that wasn’t a big problem.  The leather would stretch.   They were outrageously pink, extravagant and beautiful and a barrel of fun to wear on Easter Sunday.

Returning Thanks

“No duty is more urgent than that of returning thanks.” Saint Ambrose

Now that I have lit the old cookstove and poured myself a mug of frothy hot chocolate, my pressing duty this morning is to return thanks for the wonderful awards that I was given last night for excellence in painting.

Each spring, Muskoka Arts and Crafts hosts a members’ exhibition of art and craftwork in Bracebridge. The opening Friday evening is a gala event, made special with beautiful flower arrangements, hors d’oeuvres, and wine. The members walk around to see what each other has produced over the year and meet the public while a live jazz band entertains the large crowd. At the end of the evening, awards are presented by two judges who are internationally acclaimed artists and craftspeople themselves. This year’s judges were Susan Warner Keene and Michael C. Fortune. I received an award for excellence in painting for my acrylic Huntsville and I received the Award of Conservancy, which is also a cash award, for my oil Looking for Booth’s Farm. Furthermore, my third painting Canoeing in Algonguin Park sold at the show. I’d say it was my night. Everything I submitted was recognized for excellence. I am elated.

Excellence in Painting Award, Muskoka Arts and Crafts Spring Members’ Show, March 20, 2013

The Muskoka Conservancy Award, MAC Spring Members’ Show, March 20, 2013

Exhibiting ones work to the public is the final stage in the creation of a work of art. My paintings do not feel completed until I can see the effect the art has on the viewer. When I receive awards, I feel motivated, empowered and joyful. Even though I do not depend on them to keep me painting, it ‘s awfully nice when I do receive recognition for my work. I will proudly and gratefully hang my awards in my gallery.

Let it Snow!

The world outside my studio today is a grey, cast-iron caldron of popping popcorn and I am peeking over the rim watching the fluffy stuff jump, swirl and pile up and up.

I wish those white blobs were edible. My lunch date at my friend’s house was cancelled due to this big snowfall and I’m starving. Like her, most of us in Muskoka live isolated at the end of windy, hilly, back roads that are not plowed very often. When it snows like this, we just learn to change plans quickly and sit tight until we can budge.

Thankfully, I don’t have to budge for another hour. Tom Allan is playing Vivaldi and I am reminded just how well Vivaldi and snowy days go together. The two seem to be mimicking each other with their pristine, joyful dances.

It is a great joy just to see the snow finally return to Dorset. It certainly took its time this year and I was beginning to worry that global warming was going to deprive me of one of my favourite painting subjects. I love it when the winter snow dresses the trees like royalty in stately mantles of ermine and lays down a thick spongy carpet over the impassible, debris-strewn forest floor. Snow transforms it into a smooth, white desert that I can stride easily across on racket-shaped snowshoes into the remotest of places.

Winter Garb  by Elizabeth Johnson  24×20″ acrylic on canvas

As I watch the first big snow come down in Dorset, I think of A. Y. Jackson’s First Snow Algoma, of A. J. Casson’s big blobs in First Snow, Grenadier Pond  and of Kathleen Moir Morris’ snow-laden Montreal scenes. Many Canadian painters have even managed to sneak those beautiful snow shapes into their spring and summer paintings. Whether they were put there subconsciously or intentionally, they are there.  Just have a look at Lauren Harris’ clouds and Arthur Lismer’s blossoms in Georgian Bay, Spring. What about Tom Thompson’s Lily Pads? I bet those painters were longing for the snow to come back soon after the spring melt.

A gallery owner once advised me not to paint winter scenes. “They don’t sell,”  he said.  He might have just as well told me not to be Canadian. Snow is the trademark of so many Canadian painters.

My hour is up. I must go out into the popping, dancing whiteness and find my son for his violin lesson. He will be playing a Vivaldi concerto for his teacher this afternoon.

The Nonagenarian

Recently, I got a phone call from a woman who had seen my exhibit of paintings at the Huntsville Public Library and wanted to purchase one of the paintings. A small, halting voice with a distinct German accent spoke on the other end of the line. As she asked questions about the painting, I clearly recognized the voice. She was the woman who had been singled out at the Concert Association of Huntsville last month because she was celebrating her 92nd birthday. And here she was, still buying original art.

Most of the few people who reach their nineties have already reduced whole households to fit into one small room, bulging with belongings, in a retirement residence. Indeed, my client lived in such a place herself. She explained that she had a spot left on her wall for one of my paintings. Could I possibly get my husband to hang it for her?

There are days when cynicism about the lack of buyers of fine art blows through the cracks of my soul like a winter gale in a draughty farmhouse. But then, there are days like this one, where I am deeply warmed and encouraged by a 92 year old woman who is still walking around art exhibits, still enjoying and responding to art, still vibrant enough to invest in the creative energies of a younger generation, still wanting to own an object of beauty.

What a great honour it is to be the one to occupy that last little square of bare wall in her retirement residence room.

My Solo Exhibition Speech at the Huntsville Public Library, Nov.9, 2012

Walks in Beauty

I  cannot remember the exact moment in my life when I responded to art.  Certainly, the beauty of stark simplicity and things made by hand were givens in my childhood: the bright, patchwork quilts, the thick, braided wool rugs, the jewel-coloured jars of home-canned fruits, jams, relishes and sausages, the vases of flamboyant flowers against a bare, white wall of my Mennonite home – these were some of the moments when I responded to art early on in life. Back then, I had all the time in the world to walk around and stare.

Just how I jumped from these early sensations to becoming a painter, I don’t really understand myself.  I had a little box of paints that my brother had given me.  Just seeing the clean, shiny colours,  smelling the turpentine, and feeling the spring of the brush hairs  thrilled me.  I started looking at the  world differently, dividing everything I saw into little blobs of paint.

While I always struggled with orderliness in my life, somehow the  organizing of shape, colour, texture and pattern on a two-dimensional, clearly defined plane was manageable and terribly exciting.  I felt like I was the conductor of an orchestra –bringing in separate parts to make a splendid, unified picture that sings beauty. Later on, one of my art teachers referred to colours as notes and told me to “Paint like a (wo)man climbing a hill, singing”

I am very honoured to be part of such a great painting tradition, one that stretches back 15 thousand years to the cave painters of France and Spain. It warms my heart to think that we humans still come together to celebrate the act of making marks, one by one, by hand, especially today when computers can make thousands of pictures for us instantly in any style and colour. Art exhibits remind us that we are not machines.  Each little brushstoke made by a human hand is crammed with information about what it is to be a particular human being.    No wonder ancient civilizations thought that art carried magical powers.

And just maybe it does.  After all, angels always seem to pop up whenever I go out painting.  I was shivering one cold autumn day while painting on the front stoop of an old house. I thought no one was home. The door behind me creaked open and someone dropped a warm shawl over my shoulders.

A few weeks ago, I drove past Tally Ho in Hillside on hwy #60.  I have always loved the view of the big garden and the small bight cabins under the big trees.  Since I had my easel with me,  I pulled over to the side of the road and set it up, squeezed out blobs of paint, and was all ready to go, when I realized that I didn’t have any turpentine.  Well, you can’t paint oils without some thinning agent. At that very instant, a car drove up behind me  – the owner of Tally Ho.  She put a call into housekeeping and within minutes, another car drove up and handed me a  jug of turpentine.

Last month, I set up my easel by some unused railway tracks in a rough end of Port Colborne, my hometown.  I was deep in concentration when I heard the flatulating engine of a passing Harley Davidson suddenly stop.  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a leathery, tough-looking dude, heading right for me.

“What are you doing here?” He yelled at me.

I braced myself.

“This is no place for a painter.  Can’t you see there’s garbage all around?”

He was right.  I hadn’t noticed before.  I was even standing in it.  The beauty if the starkness of the houses had absorbed all my interest.   After a good long look at the painting, he burst out laughing.

“Hah!  That’s beautiful!  Imagine that!  You do find beauty in all the garbage and weeds. I live here and I never seen it before.   Hey, can I take your picture?  They won’t believe this.”

“Sure. Go ahead.” I answered, wondering who THEY were.

“Thanks,  he said, “You know, you’ve made my day.

“Thank you, Sir. You have made my day, too,“  I answered.  Away he went, muttering to himself something about finding beauty in the strangest places and I went back to my painting, smiling inside and out.

The challenge for the painter in Muskoka is not the sifting through garbage to find beauty, (at least not yet).  Rather, the challenge is to sort through a surplus of jaw-dropping beauty, ever changing landscapes, to find the little unexpected nugget that, on canvas, will say just enough of what I found to be important about the whole majestic scene.

It is very important to have local, original art hanging in a public library which is dedicated to another form of art – the written word.  Since a picture is worth  a thousand words,  books and visual art are a splendid team that speak truth in different languages.   In fact, it was from literature that I took the title for my show – a poem by Lord Byron entitled, “She Walks in Beauty”.  You walk in beauty, too. The many exhibits that will pass through this library will help you to develop the vision to recognize it  – the beauty of nature, the beauty of the commonplace, the beauty of the abstract, the beauty of the ugly, the beauty of the unexpected.  Painting is a lot about seeing.

One of my teachers was Bill Schultz.  His teacher, Brachman, was a student of the great American painter, Robert Henri, who wrote, “Art in the community has a subtle, unconscious, refining influence.” With art hanging on its walls, the library will become the life-centre of Huntsville from where powerful, stimulating ideas and discussions will radiate, just as Henri predicted of art schools.

I thank the show curator, Mary Rashleigh  and head librarian, Debbie Duce for having the vision to create this venue  for artists to communicate with the public. It’s a great privilege for me to be the first to have my say about my little slice of life and my impressions of it. Thank you to musicians, Josh, Graham and David and a heartfelt thank you to everyone for coming to look at my paintings and to share this celebration with me.

“Walks in Beauty” hangs in the Huntsville Public Library until December 21, 2012