“Full Circle “

I feel like I’ve come full circle. What I mean is that as a child, I started out with a rabid love of painting in oils, put it aside to start career and family, and have now returned to my “first love”. 

In grade six, at Brock Corydon Elementary School in Winnipeg, my art teacher took my parents aside and told them to encourage their daughter in her art. We had had an art class that involved drawing portraits of each other, and my portrait of my friend Joan actually looked like her.

So my parents bought me art supplies, including my first set of oil paints, and a canvas pad. They told me I could use the basement storage room for my first “studio”. I was able to get out of washing a lot of supper dishes by holding my shaking left hand and claiming that “the hand” needed to paint! Many hours were spent in that cold cellar, experimenting with oils. I remember a portrait of a girl with brown eyes, wearing a red hooded jacket, that I painted from memory.

Over the years, my art teachers throughout school always encouraged me. In Junior High, I was sponsored to take Saturday classes at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, and in the summers, rode my bicycle to Assiniboine Park for “Painting in the Park” classes.