biography

photo by Deb Huband

I was born in 1950 in the heart of downtown Toronto in the back seat of my uncle’s late model Buick. Like most girls of my vintage, I was herded towards all things domestic, and save for an incident in grade eleven when I convinced authorities to allow me to drop home economics in favour of commercial design, I displayed no particular aptitude towards the arts.After high school I drifted with the rest of my grad class flotsam into University where I learned how to smoke a pipe and protest social injustice. Two years later and still not actually qualified to do anything, I assumed an entry level position with a major bank and before you could say “accidental and bland career” one such thing yawned open before me. By 1983 the unlived life was nipping at my heels like a badly behaved poodle and I was forced to take a leave from banking to recover from major abdominal surgery. While recuperating I bought myself a set of cheap watercolours and embarked on a course of serious dabbling. In those small hard tablets of pigment, I began to locate a voice, my voice. I enrolled in a local art school but dropped out after only one semester when I found myself in hospital once again, trading my straight A’s for another segment of small intestine. I became convinced of the need to find my own way. Since then, I have done just that. I make my home on Gabriola Island, BC.

statement I had no intention of becoming an artist. There was no childhood dream, no revelationary moment, no intuitive flash, and no channeling of Emily Carr. It was more that the specter of art-making appeared before me as an inflatable raft to a drowning woman and I hauled myself onto it as a way to save my life. I needed to see myself and know myself. Not surprisingly, I am virtually self-taught.

I work primarily in acrylic paint on canvas. I love this medium. I love how it forgives and forgets, how it lets me put it wherever I want, how it dries fast when I am impatient to move on. I work fairly energetically, not wanting to prune back any impulse that arises. I spend a lot of time getting out of my own way. This is not as easy as you’d think.

The text that always appears in my work is vitally important to me. Painting without text would be like Ginger Rogers dancing without Fred Astaire. It would be show and tell without the tell. They just go together. I can’t seem to help myself. Maybe there’s a 12 step group for that.

Over the years there have been what you would call recurring motifs appearing in my work. Hearts and birds have pretty much been there all along, but the dogs are a more recent addition. I’d love to be able to attribute this to some more exotic phenomena, but truth be told, it is a simple case of art imitating life. My partner and I adopted a small maltese-poodle cross in 2001 and life has never been the same. An even more recent interest is Sigmund Freud and not just because if I’d been around during his tenure I would have spent considerable time on his couch, but because he was a huge dog-lover. For that, I am willing to forgive almost anything….

I would describe the practice of making art as requiring a mix of rapt dedication and raw conviction. It is one of the purest acts of faith I know about. World events of recent years have made it difficult at times for me to sustain such self-directed and singular focus and yet in my heart I believe that it is through this re-visiting of ourselves over and over again in the creative process, that we make a small stitch in the weave of our shared humanity. I try to remember that birds begin their song each day in darkness, gently spreading a tapestry of faith across the land.