User Profile

Born in Leicester (pronounced Lester) England. I have a brother and sister. I'm the eldest, my brother came next. We were raised working class, which meant my conditioning, and education prepared me to be a wife and mother.

We emigrated to Toronto in '57: I was married in '58; had two children by '62; and I was divorced in '68. I never remarried.

I took art nightschool classes in the early 60's, to get out a couple of nights a week, and do something I enjoyed.

The Woman's Lib movement didn't really fizz on me. Though mom worked at different periods I was content to be a stay-at-home mom. Fortunately for me, my husband left when both my boys were still babies, so I had no trouble getting government assistance. These were the years that allowed me to develop my art. But after my eldest son died, and the youngest was old enough to drop out of school, I had little time to paint as I had to make a living.

A string of dead-end jobs led me to apply for courses at Centennial College, in the hope of getting a stable, well paying job. Only after I got my diploma did I realize it wasn't my lack of higher education that was the problem; it was the corporate trend to hire mostly part-time workers to avoid paying benefits; plus my lack of a car, and a business wardrobe. I drove myself into a breakdown and ended up on disability. With the pressure off I eventually felt more like myself, and ready to persue an art carreer.

Our lives became more nomadic when there was just the two of us. I took my son to live on Cape Breton Island for four years, to get him away from the drug scene of the mid 70'. It was my dream to homestead, so we roughed it for almost three year. It was the best thing I could have done, but life was tough out there with no work for a boy. After that we seemed to thrive on change.

I didn't accomplish much in the worldly sense, but I have mountains of photos from our travels; heaps of old art, after giving the best away as gifts. There was a period when my brother commissioned me to do pieces for him, to give me a chance to become an artist. But my stuff is scattered on two continents, and I'm still a no name artist. However, we finally got a good computer, and I can do something with all my stuff. Now they have software that can take my art to a new level, if I can stop blogging long enough to work on it.

When I became a born-again Christian in '91, the only art I did was modernize Illustrated manuscripts, so I could use my art while I studied the bible. Since it seems part of my being to creatively express myself, I have used my love of words to write; it doesn't hurt to have an archive of pictures I can use to illustrate a point; I still say a picture is worth a thousand words.

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