Newsmakers of the Year

 

Another whirl of the old globe for all of us, and a friendly face or two to recall some close-to-home high times in 2022 – Panda and a 3-inch diameter slice of bamboo (a holiday thrift shop find – not from my back yard), a broken brick from three blocks away, and a new denizen and panda-pal for the Yellow House – a ladybug whose presence recalls her extensive clan.

 

It's a reflective time of year for me and, like Janus, the Roman god of doorways, I take time to look both backward and forward.  Unpack the time-honoured Xmas ornaments and audiotapes (20-30-40 years old) and I'm comfortably off in reveries for a good week or more.

 

One of this week's sentimental journeys was a spin on the Google bicycle that records Streetview with a plan to check out all the places I've ever called home, the actual houses I lived in.  Surprisingly, most of these are still there – including the London, Ontario, rental house where we made our cozy home in 1972-77 before heading west.

 

It's the centre structure.  To its left is the student apartment building, where some kids first adopted and then abandoned the sweetest tabby kitten.  She was a feisty little one with her Plan B, already hanging out in the yard (at spitting distance) from our own two cats.  When the students cleared out, she barged in through our screen door and within days was part of the family.  With a nod to the spy thrillers of the time, we named her "Intrepid – the Cat Who Came in from the Cold" – aka "Treppy." 

 

Another memory of that house seemed to resonate with one of my life drawings in a stack I was sorting.  I would sit on the sofa inside the front window, looking out onto the narrow front porch beneath the overhang of the roof.  Sometimes I'd think of the women who must have lived in that house before me.  Oddly enough, I'd often think of the Irish grandmother I never knew, who came almost alone to a new country (the US) and made her life there. 

 

Young women who dreamed their dreams – and, along another thought train, young women artists who might even have made something of a name for themselves at one time but are forgotten now, like those in the book I'm coincidentally re-reading over the holidays.

 

 

Do you recognize any of these names?  Gwen John, Ida Nettleship, Gwen Salmond, and Edna Clarke Hall.  Before reading the book, I knew only Gwen John, as sister of her well-known brother Augustus.

 

And so – in this sentimental season – my memories, the life drawing, the book I'm reading, all came together in a plan for a painting – a young woman dreaming at a window.

 

It's not a self-portrait although I borrowed my once-brown hair – rather, it's a kind of reverie on…oh, let's say, one of youth's tasks.

 

 

It wasn't painted in the spirit of "What might have been…" or "If only…".  At different times in my life, trusted listeners have advised me that both these phrases are less than helpful.  And in the broad brush, it doesn't apply only to females.

 

Here's the final version – much less than I'd dreamed, but I can always paint over!  "She Was Young Once – and Dreamed" (copyright 2022)

 

Today, New Year's Eve, I grabbed a not-bad weather forecast and headed for a long ramble along Kits Beach where I found lots of dogs and walkers and, happily, no lasting damage from the week's King Tides.

 

On the way home, at my last transfer point, I spotted just the right message for the New Year – or any year.  Painted on building walls that will soon be hidden by the new subway station being built there, these young and old faces and their message seem to have been waiting – just for us.

 

 

 

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!"