Festivities and surprises

 

For me, the festive season started over a month ago.  Suddenly, it was as if the logjam broke, and it became possible again for meet-ups once or even twice a week with a friend here, a friend there, who I hadn't seen in however-long-it-was.  Almost every reunion would begin with, "I can't remember the last time we were able to do this."

 

One happy marker that kicked off the late fall get-togethers was the arrival of my friend M, home for a long-awaited weekend to see her Vancouver family – and friends like me, for whom it's been a very long time.  We found a familiar place for coffee and talked almost three hours straight.  As we parted M said, "Oh, I thought you might be interested in this – from an exhibit I saw recently."

 

 

The title didn't entirely make sense to me (more about that in a minute) but when I turned the simple 2-sided card to the reverse ------- OMG!!   I'd found a new hero(ine).  Yet I had never before heard of this B.C. artist.

 

 

"Interested" indeed!   Let's start with the artist's name, which I googled as soon as I reached home:  "How do you pronounce 'Myfanwy'?"   The answer:  "muh-VON-wee – a Welsh name that means 'dear one' or 'lovely little one.'"

 

As you'll read here and here,  Myfanwy was a well-known portrait artist and member of a group of prominent Victoria B.C. artists called "The Limners."  Our own Emily Carr –(talk about belated recognition!) -- had noted Myfanwy's talent as an 8-year-old child and had given her some lessons and encouragement.

 

Our Vancouver Public Library could offer only an exhibit pamphlet from 1978 – twenty pages of about 60 small reproductions of paintings, drawings, collages.

 

Here's a self-portrait:

 

 

And a quite dynamic view of her husband.

 

 

So far, I haven't discovered how she came to paint musicians such as Yehudi Menuhin and Mstislav Rostropovich.  There are several Menuhin portraits on-line; here's one from the exhibit pamphlet:

 

Among subjects of hers are Queen Elizabeth II, former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau (his official portrait that hangs in the House of Commons) – and Katharine Hepburn!  But the painting that I loved best of those in the library's 1978 pamphlet is this one:

 

 

And so – I resolved to try to copy it, as a memory of this happy discovery of a "new" artist.  Here's the preliminary layout:

 

And here's an early stage – often these are more engaging than the later ones.   Look carefully and you'll see that I'd already drifted into a mistake I wouldn't catch until a few sessions later – putting five fingers (not counting the thumb) on her left  hand!

 

Here's my final version.  It was so satisfying to spend time with this small reproduction as a way to lock in this new discovery -- brought to me across the waters of the Salish Sea by my friend M.  It's a happy coincidence that Myfanwy's original is titled "Mary."

 

 

As I thought of these happy autumn reunions with so many cherished friends,  I remembered a passage from novelist Lawrence Durrell's series "The Alexandria Quartet."  In that letter-writing era, the character Balthazar writes to a friend:

"…how much better it would be if we could talk… I think it is perhaps the only real lack of which one is conscious in living alone:  the mediating of a friend's thoughts to place beside one's own, just to see if they match!"