MairImages

erings on television, I found myself some paper and a pencil and began to draw. Badly – not much had changed since the idle doodles of my teenaged and college self many years before. Surely if I had matured my drawings should too! That was when I decided that it was time to learn to draw properly. At the very least it would be an interesting way to pass my time. I began by learning a few techniques from books on drawing. There was some improvement. Then, curious about working with colour and with paint, I took the leap and enrolled in classes, first with Isabel van Zant and later with D.D. I was drawn in (pun intended). I kept learning what I could - at demos, as a member of SOYRA, and through reading about, looking at and exploring different painting techniques. I began to learn how to use colour well. After a while I found I was happiest working in acrylic, a very versatile medium. Then I learned about soft pastels and wax pastels - loved the sensuous way the wax pastels moved under my fingers as I filled and blended, enough to put up with their messiness. And lately I’ve ventured into pencils, because my work space is smaller and when I work with pencils it’s so easy to put them aside and return to them later. I love to create images, using rich colours to draw the viewer in. You can see what interests me – seas and skies, bodies dancing, bodies as landscape, the state of our world, figures and features more and less abstract. And as I dip more into writing I remember how much I love the imagery, spareness and cadence of poetry, and am aware of the way that writing can open other doors into my world. I have shown my art in group shows, individual shows and exhibits, and in a co-operative gallery. Now that we are (relatively) stationary once again I'm looking forward to sharing more of my work locally. I have self-published one book of poems and images, and I’m working on a memoir about our journey up the St. Lawrence.