| I
was born in Ontario's very-far-north in Pickle Crow, 1938; in
1941 we moved to Port Credit, Ontario. A once-known painter,
Tom Roberts, swiped our house in 1944, but I forgave him as he
taught me to paint. In 1947 I started painting seriously with
Adrian Dingle, who was an excellent teacher and painter. In
1949 he sent me to the Doon School of Fine Arts and for the
next five years I spent every summer in its entirety learning
from some of the very best, including Carl Schaefer, Herb
Ariss, Clare Bice, Yvonne McKague Housser, York Wilson and
Alex Miller. Casson and Varley taught there; Dorothy Stevens
taught portrait groups. It was a thorough grounding overall.
We learned as much from soaking up conversations with these
wonderful teachers and mentors as we did in studying with them
and acquiring various techniques.
In 1956 I
attended the Ontario College of Art, where I once more had
marvelolous teachers and influences . . . perhaps I should
particularly mention those. Jock Macdonald and Eric Freifeld
were surrogate fathers to me, along with the dear and
irascible Carl Schaefer, Fred Hagan, John Alfsen, Victor
Papenek, Rowley Murphy . . . on the outer rim Graham Coughtry
and Aba Bayefsky teaching how not to teach. I also worked at
the Stratford Festival Theatre that summer painting costumes;
this was a broadening experience which later led to me doing
some theatrical work (in Beirut and Bangkok, of all places).
I graduated
from the Ontario College of Art in 1960 with a major
scholarship (the T. Eaton Award . . . first female recipient
ever . . .) plus a Tyrone Guthrie Award from Stratford. With
this I left for Spain for a year, which eventually turned into
14 exuberant years of painting, learning, travelling and
exhibiting. I met Antonio Tapies briefly. I lived in Spain
just outside of Malaga; I moved to Darmstadt, Germany from
1960 to 1962 where I exhibited at the stadtsmuseum in several
group shows. I moved back to Spain in 1962, exhibited with el
Grupo at the museo de Bellas Artes in Malaga, and set off
overland by an old VW camping bus via North Africa arriving in
Beirut November 1963. While in Beirut I taught some painting
courses and had three successful exhibitions before heading
east again in 1967 . . . across Asia this time, once more in
the old VW bus.
This gave me a
unique opportunity to become familiar with the Eastern
artistic traditions, old and new . . . at least as they
existed in the 60's. Eventual arrival in Bangkok via Singapore
and Kuala Lumpur, settling down there painting, teaching
private students, exhibiting in a few small galleries, and
having my first son. In 1970 I moved to Hong Kong, where I
painted, had one small exhibition, learned some new ink
techniques, and two more sons were born.
In 1974 I
returned to Canada, moving to Glen Allan, Ontario, and had two
more children. I painted small works, and exhibited with the
Kitchener-Waterloo Association of Artists at their
annual shows from 1970 onward. I taught an art course at St
John's-Kilmarnock School in Breslau, Ontario in 1985 and
frequently exhibited in "Insights"
group shows at the Wellington Museum County Museum and
Archives in Fergus, Ontario, receiving the SunArt Award in
1997. I was one of the cofounders as
well as one of the curators of Gallery 2000 in Kitchener. In 1998 I
was privileged to participate in a show at the Art Gallery of Peel, Brampton,
Ontario and from 2000 through 2002 I participated in the "Insights"
Wellington Museum and Archives group shows in Fergus, Ontario. In 2003 I participated in
the Waterloo Community Arts Centre's "The BIG Show", Homer Watson
House & Gallery's group show of
"Cruikshank", and displayed in the juried show at
the Tom Thomson Art Gallery in Owen Sound, receiving the
Lincoln Croft Memorial Award. In 2004 I had a solo show at the
Waterloo Community Arts Centre,
and in 2005 I had a solo show at the KOR Art Gallery, a solo
show at the Waterloo Regional Arts Council and was an artist in the
Toronto International Art Expo. |
