An Artist’s Journey
In the mid 1950’s, when I was twelve years old, I started Grade 7 in Junior High School. That was the first year students were allowed to choose an elective. I chose Art. I learned that I wasn’t very good at Art. I could get an ‘A’ in Math, English and History, but I could only get a ‘C+’, or occasionally, a ‘B’ in Art. So I never chose Art as an elective again throughout my education.
Thinking about that Art class now, I remember that when we were assigned a project, I painted or drew my interpretation of the assignment. I always thought the result looked pretty good. But it never looked like the other classmates’ work. They had realistic paintings or drawings. Mine always looked goofy. I did not know that goofy was really abstraction.
In June of 1983, I purchased my first good camera. I was given a telephoto lens as a gift and a new world opened for me. I photographed everything, but what I loved to do was to take my camera into nature and photograph the minute details. My rock, rust and frozen mud puddle photographs looked like abstract paintings. It was a thrill to see my world expand.
In January of 1984, I was reading the Northwest Community College pamphlet of courses available for the season ahead. For some unknown reason I signed up for a weekend Writing Workshop offered that month. This workshop changed my life. The writers who attended were part of a Writers’ Group who met every second Wednesday to critique, encourage and to inform each other about possible markets for their work. I found the weekend workshop, and the writers, so interesting and invigorating that I attended their next meeting. I wrote a simple story that I had to read out loud while my hands and papers shook with every word that came out of my mouth. The story was gently critiqued and I was encouraged to work on it. I was given ideas how to do this from this eclectic group of artists. Aside from being writers and poets, they were actors, playwrights, painters, photographers, musicians, quilters, dancers, as well as being teachers, hockey players, fly fishers, bookkeepers, clerks, gardeners, newspaper editors, and many were partners and parents as well.
Year after year the Writers’ Group met every second Wednesday from autumn until spring. This was not assigned writing. You wrote whatever you wanted to write. You brought copies for the other members, read out load and each piece was critiqued. It was a wonderful learning experience for me. From 1985 until 1992, the group published “North Coast Collections,” a small literary journal of writing and visual art from members of the group and from writers across the northwest who responded to the call for submissions. I loved getting a photograph, poem or short story published each year. And thanks to the patience and critiques of the others, I managed to improve until I was getting work published in literary journals, anthologies and magazines.
Towards the end of the 1980’s, while I was visiting my son, Clint, in Victoria, BC, I ventured into a small art gallery. A postcard caught my attention. The lines, the colour, the composition appealed to me. I bought the postcard. When I got home I framed the postcard and hung it on my kitchen wall where I could see it every day. It is still there 40 years later. The image on the postcard is an abstraction painted by Wassily Kandinsky in 1914, “Untitled Improvisation lll.”
In 1995, when I was 51 years old, I put a knapsack on my back and flew to Europe for four weeks. My aim was to see Denmark, my father’s homeland, and to travel to Norway to visit a brother-in-law and his family. While in Denmark, I asked my cousin if we could visit Louisiana, the Danish Contemporary Art Gallery. The main exhibition featured Danish artist, Asger Jorn. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing … huge canvases of extreme abstract paintings. I bought a catalogue of the exhibition. I also bought a postcard … a painting by Kandinsky, “The Railway at Murray 1909/10,” … which still hangs over my kitchen sink, a memory of my European trip and the many trains that took me from country to country.
I visited many art galleries in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Some galleries I visited over and over and over again especially if the gallery had a large collection of abstract paintings. My head and heart expanded with the visions of the many artists who expressed themselves with abstraction.
Later that year, Clint gave me a set of watercolours. My early attempts at painting were a disappointment but I did enjoy watching colours collide and interact with one another. I tried to paint the abstractions that my camera was making but the paintings didn’t work. I didn’t like them. The camera remained the insight into my world of abstraction.
Throughout the 1990’s, I travelled every winter to Baja with my partner, Bill. And every winter I wrote one essay. I also continued to write poems and stories, to photograph rocks and cacti, and to paint desert skies and smoke trees with my little set of watercolours.
In 2003, Clint and I travelled to London and Paris to visit art galleries. Clint, who teaches art and art history in Vancouver, made the artists come alive with stories of their work and their lives. At the Tate Gallery in London I saw my first paintings by Jackson Pollock. Huge canvases of Pollock’s abstractions filled one room except for one wall that displayed three abstract paintings by his wife, Lee Krasner. At the Pompidou Centre gallery in Paris I saw the most beautiful painting I’d ever seen … “The Deep” by Jackson Pollock.
We went to the Picasso Museum that only featured art by Picasso except for one room that held his collection of abstractions by other artists. I left the gallery amazed at the art by one artist. He not only painted, he sculpted, and made art with wood or ceramics. It was liberating so see what one person could do. And to do it however he wanted. It was a lesson I carried home with me.
At one of the galleries we visited in Paris, I saw the original painting by Kandinsky of the image on that first postcard I had purchased in Victoria in the late 1980’s, “Untitled Improvisation lll.” Imagine my surprise and thrill to see that canvas.
I had tucked the little watercolour case into my small suitcase before flying to London and Paris. We painted in our hotel rooms most evenings. I had no success. Clint did. He made me a small painting while we were in Paris. “For Mom from Paris … Love Clint” that still hangs on my kitchen wall.
Later that year, Clint gifted me a set of acrylic paints and brushes. I didn’t have any better results with acrylics than I did with watercolours. Although I didn’t like the paintings, I had fun painting. I kept trying as I wanted so much to make abstract paintings like I’d seen in the galleries. But I couldn’t seem to replicate with paints what the camera, and my eyes, saw. Photography created the images that I loved.
In 2005, Clint and I travelled to New York where there was a concentration of paintings by the American Abstract Impressionists. I was fascinated by the ability of so many artists to make art that appealed to my senses. We spent hours and walked miles to see every art museum in the city. The quality and amount of abstraction was phenomenal and for me it was the highlight of our trip to New York.
The following year, I was in a stationary store in Prince Rupert and saw a sketch book with an intricately embellished leather cover and magnetic clasp that kept the book closed. It cost $25 which seemed a lot for a sketch book. It was the sort of book I would buy as a gift but not something I would buy for myself. However, I bought it and I kept it. That summer when Clint was home on vacation, we drove Highway 16 alongside the Skeena River with my acrylic paints, two canvas boards, two easels and my brand new sketch book. We stopped at Telegraph Point and settled ourselves at a picnic table. Clint encouraged me to make a sketch of what I intended to paint. Instead, on the first blank page, I sketched Clint. Then I turned the page and sketched the mountain scene I was going to paint. That sketch book is a record of many pleasant days and travels over the next several years. And my painting that day at Telegraph Point showed some promise of better results to come. The paintings in New York had inspired me to keep trying.
In 2007, my daughter, Shirley, my granddaughter, Allison, and I travelled to Tacoma, Washington, to see a quilt exhibition by the women of Gee’s Bend that was touring art galleries throughout the USA. I had read about this exhibition in the Smithsonian Magazine and was amazed at the unusual quilts illustrated in the article. Jane Livingstone, curator or the exhibition, said “The quilts rank with the finest abstract art of any tradition.” When we entered the huge room that held the entire exhibition, tears sprung to my eyes. There were quilts hanging everywhere. On the walls they hung double deep. Quilts hung from the ceiling, they hung on partitions throughout the room. These women from Gee’s Bend, Alabama, had made quilts from whatever they could find … flour sacks, worn out work clothes, hoarded corduroy, scraps of whatever fabric they could find. The quilts were made to use, to keep warm in homes that had no electricity, running water, or heat, but they were made with an eye for design and colour. The quilters from Gees Bend got their inspiration from their backyard views and local scenes; dilapidated buildings, crooked fences, broken gates. We left the gallery excited with what we had seen. Their lack of rules or need for formal patterns inspired me. I could hardly wait to get my hands on some fabric and start cutting and sewing.
Clint heard about an exhibition by American artist, Richard Diebenkorn, that was on display at the Phillips Collection Gallery in Washington, DC, so in August of 2008 we decided it was a good time to travel to Washington to see this exhibition and visit the American National Art Gallery and the Smithsonian galleries. Once again we spent hours looking at paintings and sculptures and made a really good attempt at wearing out my legs and feet. How many times can I say how amazing the countless amount of great art was to my whole being. It was thrilling to be with my son for this immersion into the art world. When we visited the National Museum of Women in the Arts, included was a quilt exhibition by Rosie Lee Tompkins. The quilts on display exploded with colour and unusual designs. It was incredible to experience the vision of another fabric artist.
Since seeing the Gees Bend quilts, I had taken scissors to fabric and sewn pieces together on my Mom’s old Singer sewing machine that sat in a corner of my kitchen. I had made Bill a picnic table scarf for a Christmas gift and had made a quilt for our bed from shirts, pillow cases and fabric from my daughter, thrift shops and from family members emptying and disposing of clothes from closets and drawers. Later, it was a neighbour who lent me a quilter’s mat and cutter. I didn’t know there was a proper way to make quilts.
In October of 2008, I experienced an event I never even dreamed about back in the 1980’s when I was enjoying the many evenings with the Writers’ Group. Throughout the 1990’s and early 2000’s, I had written an essay every winter Bill and I spent as Snowbirds. Creekstone Press published fifteen of the essays, along with a section of photographs, in a memoir, “Searching For the April Moon,” and the book launch was held at the Museum of Northern BC, on a stormy night late in October of 2008.
The instructor at that first Writing Workshop I attended in 1984 told us that if we stuck together as a group, we would all eventually get published. I was the last member of that group to have a book published. When the first box of books arrived at our home and I held one of the books for the first time, I can only equate it to the first time I held my two children after they were born. And the words that came out of my mouth were, “My brothers are going to love this.” I turned the pages but I couldn’t see the written words through the tears in my eyes.
Life didn’t stop there. I had a box of books to sell. A new life experience was about to begin for me. I discovered the world of Craft Fairs and Farmers’ Markets. For the next ten years I rented a table for the Prince Rupert Arts Council’s Craft Fair held annually every mid November. And during the cruise ship and tourist season in the summer months I set up a table every Thursday afternoon at the Salmonberry Farmer’s Market. As well as selling my books, I sewed quilts, placemats and aprons. I made cards from my rock, rust, ice and water abstract photographs. I learned quickly that abstraction was not appealing for most people so I took photos of flowers, fishnets and scenes. But my paintings were all abstractions. Aside from seeing that most people walked past my paintings, I learned that people who liked abstraction loved my paintings & abstract photo cards. It was a validation for me to listen to & talk with people who were as excited as I was with what I had created. My work brought joy to me and in return, I brought joy to others.
Clint and I had one more adventure into the international art world. In 2010 Clint heard of an Arshile Gorky retrospective in the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, California. So August found us in L. A. When we walked into the entranceway for this main exhibition, I was overcome with emotion. We spent hours with Gorky’s passionate paintings before finally taking a break in the gallery’s restaurant to absorb and discuss what we had experienced. Gorky’s abstract paintings were alive with paint so thick it made the paintings appear to be three dimensional. His paintings were instrumental in making abstract art the main focus of the American Abstract Impressionists in the late 1940’s and the 1950’s.
The first evening in our hotel room in L. A., I was writing in my travel journal and Clint was painting with my watercolours that came on all our trips together. He suggested I make a ‘Gorky’ sketch in my journal. I have made a sketch of every trip I have taken since that night in L. A. I do not have to read my travel journals. I just need to look at the sketches to know where I have been. And the painting that Clint made that night hangs on my kitchen wall along with another one from Washington, D. C., and the one from Paris.
Although we didn’t know it at the time, this was the last trip Clint and I would make together. Circumstances changed for us both, but our love of art had only expanded from our travels together.
Later that year, I travelled to Southern California with Bill. We were camped at The Slabs, an open area of low desert close to the Salton Sea where every winter hundreds of Snowbirds camped for the winter. One day I walked past some campers who were preparing to leave. One of the women shouted, “Do you want some paints?” She was selling her wooden box full of oil paints, brushes and pallet knives. I paid her the $40 she was asking and carried the box back to our campsite. I had never painted with oils. It was a new and wonderful experience. I had met an elderly woman who painted with another couple every morning and she invited me to join them on their concrete slab. They became my teachers. They chose the photo I was to copy and instructed my every move through my first oil painting. I learned the technicalities of brush strokes, thinning the paint, cleaning up afterwards. I did not like the realistic scene but I did enjoy the process and the feel of the paint. My teachers were very proud of the finished painting.
By myself, I experimented often with the oils over the next four years when we camped in various areas of the desert in the wintertime. I only painted outdoors as I found the odour of the oil paint and the chemicals too strong for indoor painting. I could leave paintings on the bumper of our motorhome twenty-four hours a day. The worst thing that happened was fine sand often blew onto them and stuck, so my paintings had a grit to them. No one stole any paintings.
When I look back at the few paintings I have from that time, they bring back great memories of a carefree time, loving what I was doing. Aside from using mainly the brushes for painting, I also experimented with the pallet knives that were in my wooden box. I loved the unusual results.
At home, or during bad weather when we were away, I continued to paint with acrylics or watercolours. But now, for the acrylic paints, I used the pallet knives. I enjoyed the process and liked my paintings. Clint was home for a visit one summer and we were painting at the picnic table in our backyard. He showed me different methods of using the pallet knives. I can still remember his words, “Make your mark. Don’t be scared.” He went into the house to get something and while he was gone I braved two strong swipes with the pallet knife. When he came back, he looked at what I had done and said, “You really don’t have any fear!”
I only had four winters of oil painting on the desert. I got very sick one winter and had emergency surgery in Southern California. When I was finally well enough to fly home, I was still a long time recuperating. We never travelled to the desert again. I had put my wooden box outside with a FREE sign on it but not before I removed the pallet knives. They flew home with me.
In 2012, I was introduced to paintings by the Automatistes. They were a group of artists from Quebec who were the Canadian equivalent of the American Abstract Impressionists, and painted about the same time and with the same focus … abstraction. I was visiting galleries on Granville Street in Vancouver and stopped at a great little gallery that often featured Canadian artists like the Group of Seven or Emily Carr. The featured Canadian artist this time was Marcel Ferron. I had never heard of Marcel Ferron but I fell in love with her paintings. I bought two books of her “Paperworks 1945-2000” … one for me and one for Clint.
My exploration of painting expanded after my discovery of the Automatistes. Clint supplied the history and knowledge of the artists, and their movement that was based on spontaneously conceived painting, and freedom in thinking and art practice. I studied works by Paul-Emile Borduas, Jean-Paul Riopelle, and Marcel Ferron. And I found my voice. I didn’t want to copy their paintings, I wanted to paint with the same abandonment. Such a joy to see a clean, clear, blank white paper and have no idea of what it would look like when I was finished. There was no right or wrong way to paint. Just a freedom to play with colour, with lines. To enjoy making compositions that were pleasing to my eyes.
Aside from visiting galleries at home, in Terrace and in Vancouver since 2010, I finally made a major trip by myself to Ottawa and Montreal in April of 2024. I had read of an retrospective of Jean-Paul Riopelle’s art in Canada’s National Art Gallery in Ottawa and a joint exhibition of art by Georgia O’Keefe and Henry Moore in Montreal’s Museum of Fine Arts.
I went three times to our National Art Gallery and spent hours absorbing the works of Riopelle. It was exciting for me to see the magnitude of his more than five decades creating every type of art. Aside from his massive paintings, there was sculpture, printmaking, drawing and collage. It was a multifaceted body of work.
Montreal was an adventure as was the train ride to get there. The rail line wound through countryside that was reminiscent of many Group of Seven paintings especially in the small villages in Quebec. Montreal was a madhouse of traffic, noise and crowds, and my high school French didn’t help much with menus or signage. But I managed to find my way to the excellent exhibition that I had travelled to see at the Museum of Fine Arts. The sensuous, beautiful art of both O’Keefe and Moore filled many rooms in this splendid gallery. And totally exciting for me were the large abstractions by Bourduas, Riopelle and Ferron as well as Rita Letendre and many more modern abstract artists’ work in the Museum’s permanent collection.
My love of abstraction spans seven decades. My making of it only spans one or two. I have spent countless hours painting or quilting at my kitchen table. The joy I have found is immeasurable and highly influenced by the countless international artists’ work I have had the good fortune to see. Joy is in the making but it is also found in the seeing.
Nancy Robertson
Prince Rupert, BC
March 2025