biography

I was born in 1950 and raised south of Bloor Street in the heart of downtown Toronto Ontario. That’s me in the photo (the smaller one) looking somewhat askance. Perhaps I had already sensed the lot headed my way (homemaker, nurse, teacher, secretary) and was registering my displeasure.

I posess a flotilla of vintage books aimed at women (etiquette, charm, beauty etc.) and in the preface of one of them, a Home Economics treatise from 1943 (Foundations for Living, Appleton-Century-Crofts, NY) the authors posit that “since by far the larger percentage of these girls will not go on to college…it is vitally important that they receive from their high schools…virile, dynamic, scientific material that is pertinent to life as they find it.” Nowhere in the so-called virile, dynamic, scientific material disseminated to me during high school was there the merest mention that women might aspire to be artists. It’s probably a good thing since at the time, I had neither interest nor talent. Besides, there were only seven painters in all of Canada, and it was clear that women need not apply unless they were aspiring to be muse or model (just like a secretary only naked).

I entered into a banking career at age 22 and stayed there until a health crisis ten years in forced me down out of the corporate tower. I was far enough up the ladder to hit the ground hard, but the whole incident got my attention in a big way. While recovering from surgery to remove a threadbare section of my small intestine, I began to dabble in watercolours and in this way, changed the trajectory of my life.

Today I am priviledged to make a living as a full-time painter from my home on Gabriola Island, BC.

 

statement

There are three enduring themes around which my paintings orbit: birds, dogs and the father of all things psychoanalytic, Sigmund Freud. The birds have been there all along, right back to the early l98Os when I fell under the spell of the gorgeously graphic lines of ravens and crows. Birds offer me the perfect metaphoric touch (flight, homing and migration) and I have been making steady use of these archetypes for over 25 years. It’s a good thing I don’t have to pay them royalties.

The presence of canis lupus familiaris in my work can be explained by the simple fact that I fell in love with a small poodle cross in 2001, and I have been smitten/bitten ever since. I am now certifiably dog crazy and if this be madness, then lock me up (with my dog) and throw away the key.

My relationship with Sigmund Freud is – as you might expect – more complicated. I spent a sizeable chunk of my adult life working out the kinks of a perilous childhood, and even though I eschewed psychoanalysis in favour of other – shall we say – more egalitarian modalities, his influence is hard to escape. Also, I am a dyed in the wool feminist (please don’t say “post feminist” to me unless you are referring to dropping one in the mail). I had my consciousness raised in the late 1960s and it has stayed raised ever since. In addition to providing a certain stridentity, my feminism puts me squarely at odds with Freud and some of his downright wacky beliefs about women. But there’s more to the story. I discovered quite by accident during my dog research, that Freud was also canine crazy. He even brought them into the treatment room where they offered up their slobbery diagnoses (he believed that dogs were a good indicator of the patient’s state of mind). So in a way, Freud provides a delicious backdrop, a kind of psychic playground where I can climb all over my issues and act out certain of my revenge fantasies. So far I have remained unrenowned enough to avoid detection by litigators representing his estate. I hope to remain thus although I suppose a lawsuit or two would be a small price to pay for fame.

Birds, dogs, and Sigmund. There it is in a nut(ty)shell.