Born June 17, 1952 Quebec City, Quebec. A
professional illustrator and editorial cartoon artist she eventually took an
interest in working on books for young readers. She soon found that she
preferred to illustrate her own writings so that the pictures and words
would flow together to tell a story. She does a lot of research prior to
putting pen, ink and watercolours to paper. Many of her books have won
awards such as the Amelia Frances Howard-Gibbon Award, the Governor
General's Award, Mr. Christie's Book Award, the Ruth Schwartz Award and the
Elizabeth Mrazik-Cleaver Award!!
Lynn Johnston
Born May 28, 1947 Collingwood,
Ontario. Lynn grew up in North Vancouver,
British Columbia and studied at the Vancouver School of art, now the Emily
Carr University of Art and Design. In 1969 she married and the couple
relocated back to Ontario where she worked as a medical artist at the
McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario. Pregnant with her 1st child
she presented her obstetrician with drawings which he could place on his
otherwise boring ceiling. These drawings were the bas of her 1st boo, David
We're Pregnant in 1973.
After her divorce she published Hi Mom! Hi Dad! in 1975. She then married
dentist Rod Johnston and the family relocated to the remote community of
Lynn Lake, Manitoba. When she submitted panels for a comic strip to the
Universal Press Syndicate she was offered a 20 year contract. For Better For
Worse was a Canadian hit and was carried by about 2000 newspapers
internationally.
The storyline and the characters lead real lives with friends
admitting to being gay and the family dog dies after rescuing a child. Lynn
continued to work from her home in Corbeil, Northern Ontario. She became the
first woman to win the Reuben Award for outstanding cartoonist of the year
in 1985 from the national Cartoonist Society In 1987 she earned a Gemini
Award for Best Cartoon Series and
in 1988 she became the 1st woman to be president of
the Cartoonist Society.In 1991 she received the National Cartoonist
Society Newspaper Comic Strip Award.
She was appointed to the Order of Canada in 1992 and
nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1994 for the story o Lawrence's coming
out. in 2001 she was the winner of the Comic of the Year, Editor and
Publisher. In 2003 she was honoured with a Star on Canada's Walk of Fame,
Toronto.
In 2007 she was inducted into the Order of Manitoba and she and her husband
became separated. In 2008 she was inducted into the Canadian Cartoonist Hall
of Fame and the National Cartoon Museum Hall of Fame. In 2015 she relocated
back to North Vancouver. The Library and Archives Canada holds a large
collection of her original works. .
(2020)
Sandra Bell-Lundy
Born April 3,
1958. Sandra studied French at Brock University, St Catharines, Ontario but it would be her talent as
an cartoonist that would become her profession. She actually created comics
for her university newspaper when she was a student. She is the author
of the worldwide syndicated comic strip Between Friends. In
1994 her work caught the attention of King Features and the cartoon strip
became syndicated in 175 newspapers internationally. She is married to Tim
Lundy and the couple have 2 daughters. Her work has garnered notice from
various organizations such as the North American Council on Adoptable
Children and the Cancer society for featuring stories. To date her comic
strips have been collected and published in 3 books.
Born January 31, 1913, Linkoping, Sweden.
Died May 30, 1994. She studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Art, School of
Architecture, Interior and Furniture Design. She was active in housing
research and worked to further the recognition and professional status of
designers within Canada. Coming to Canada in 1950 she won a dozen design
awards in recognition of her work by the National Industry Design Council of
Canada. In 1973 she was elected to the Royal Academy of Arts in recognition
of her outstanding contribution to the development of modern interior design
in Canada. (2020)
Elizabeth Jean Maclean Reed
née Maclean. Born 1910, Soures, Prince Edward Island.
She earned a degree in Fine Arts at Mount Allison University. In 1959-1960 she
created the winning design for the provincial tartan. The design encompassed
the warmth and glow of the fertile soil, the green of the fields and trees,
the yellow and brown of the autumn and the life giving sun and the white of
the surf on a summer sea. In 1938 she attended the Ottawa Civic Hospital to
study nursing.
In 1941 she was an army
Lieutenant Nursing Sister serving in the European theatre of World War II.
She joined the Red Cross Arts and Crafts League after the war and engaged in
pottery and weaving while she worked at the P. E. I. Hospital.
Source: Outstanding women of Prince Edward Island
Compiled by the Zonta Club of Charlottetown, 1981. (2020)
Sylvia Tennisco
Aboriginal Artist
Born 1970, Pembroke, Ontario.
Her family moved to Ottawa where Sylvia grew up. She studied and received
her graphic design diploma at St Lawrence College, Kingston Campus in 1997.
Moving to Montreal she pursued her art career by illustrating several
children’s books in the Cree language. She did spot illustrations for
various magazines and worked as a Graphic Designer. She moved back to the
Ottawa Valley where she promotes Native Awareness and Cultural Diversity.
Her works show various mediums such as acrylic/oil pints to mix media and
acrylic/computer designs and inks. She has had sever Art Exhibits at various
Powwows in Ontario, community centers such as at Golden Lake and surrounding
areas, Queen’s University, Kingston , Ontario, and the New Edinburgh area in
Ottawa. Source: Art Card purchased at Golden Lake, Ontario.
(2020)
Born 1929, Summerset, England. Died
December 5, 2004, Toronto, Ontario. She worked as a costume cutter in England
prior to 1964 when she moved to Stratford, Ontario to work as a cutter in
the costume department of the city's famous theatre. By 1967 she was
principal costume designer for the fledgling Shaw Theatre Festival. He work
became acclaimed across the country. From 1975-1995 she was a costume
designer for CBC- TV. At the end of the 1980's, not knowing how to convince
her to retire, the CBC challenged her with a new show. "TheKids in the
Hall. Her work was a success and there was even a new character named after
her! Her talents were timeless. (2020)
Dorothy Grant
As a fashion designer she made the
decision to attempt to combine high fashion with elements of her own
traditional Haida native culture. The result is a new style that was once
described as 'wearable art" and since the 1980's her fashion business has
bee a leader in the Aboriginal fashion industry. Her works and designs are
in the collections of the National Gallery of Canada, were featured at the
world EXPO 86 in Vancouver and have been successful in the international
fashion scene. (2020)
Born 1944, Montreal, Quebec. She studied
art at the L'Ecole de beaux arts in Montreal. As an illustrator of
Children's books she is perhaps best known for her character JOJO (JIJI en
française) and her lovable toy aardvark, Pichou. These delightful characters
first appeared in the mid 1970's. A friend sent her first two books to a
publisher. The Mon Ami Pichou is a series of illustrated stories for young
children published in both English and French. She was one of the first
picture book artists in Quebec to receive national recognition. In 1978 she
earned the Canada Council Children's Literature award and again in 1982. In
1987 she was awarded Le Prix Fleury Mesplet for the best children's author
of the decade. Her works have also won the 1989 Mr. Christie's Book Award.
(2020)
Carol Biberstein
Evan as a youth she enjoyed drawing. She
followed her passions and studied art fundamentals and illustration at
Sheridan College in Oakville, Ontario. She enjoys working from life, photos
and her imagination. While she prefers watercolours as a medium she also
works in pen & ink, pastel and acrylics. From 1998 to 1996 she taught
English as Second language to adult immigrants . She has done educational
book illustrations for many large publishers including Scholastic Press and
Oxford, Harcourt Brace, Nelson and Addison Wesley. In 2001 she wrote and
illustrated her first picture book Great Grandma's Rocking Chair.
(2020)
Ann Blades
Born 1947 Vancouver, British Columbia. She
studied for her teaching certificate at the University of British Columbia
in 1967 and taught in northern regions of British Columbia. It was during
this time that she began to write and illustrate stories for her students.
There were very few stories written about children of northern regions of
Canada and she would use some of her students as models for the characters
in her books. In 1972 she wrote, illustrated and published Mary of Mile
18
which won the Children's Book of the Year Award from the Canadian
Library Association. In 1974 she returned to school and became a registered
nurse, never dreaming that her talent as an author and illustrator would be
anything more than a hobby. In 1978 she won the Canadian Council Children's
Literature award and it also won in 1979 the Amelia Frances Howard-Gibbon
Award. In 1986 By the sea : an alphabet book (Toronto, 1985) won the
Elizabeth Mrazlik-Cleaver Canadian Picture Book Award. Now an established
author and illustrator she could do her work full time. She continues to
write and illustrate her own works and has illustrated over a dozen books by
other Canadian authors. (2020)
Brenda Clark
Born February 10, 1955, Toronto, Ontario.
She studied the art of illustration at Sheridan College, Oakville, Ontario
and has perused a successful career as an illustrator of books and
magazines. Her works have been published by Ginn & Co., Macmillan, Gage,
Prentice-Hall, Hold Rinehart and other well established publishers. Her
first published illustrations in a book were for school readers and
textbooks. While she has used various medium such as pencil crayons and
chalks she finds that watercolours reproduce best in publishing. She has
illustrated modern children's classics such as Franklin the Turtle in his
various adventures and in his own comic strip. Her books are read to
children around the world even in China and Australia.
(2020)
Maryann Kovalski
Born June 4, 1951, New York City, U.S.A. After studying art in New
York she moved to Canada in the 1970’s. She applied her profession by
working for agencies, magazines, and newspapers before she began illustrating
books. She moved to Montreal as a young woman and it was here she met her
future husband and the couple moved to Toronto after their marriage. She writes and illustrates her own books as well as illustrating
books of other authors, such as Margaret Atwood. She published her own book
in 1985. She is a member of the Canadian Society of Children's Authors,
Illustrators, and performers and the Society of Illustrators. She has earned
the Sydney Taylor Children's Book Award.
Source: The Canadian Encyclopedia online Accessed November 2003.
(2020)
Susan Ross
SEE - Painters
Charlotte Mount Brock Schreiber
SEE - Painters ...she is perhaps the 1st Canadian woman illustrator
Christine Tripp
Christine has
always enjoyed drawing even when she was a young girl. Christine is
dyslexic, which means that when she reads numbers and letters appear all
jumbled. Drawing was a much better way to enjoy life. She lives in Ottawa
with her husband and the couple have three adult daughter. She also admits
to being owned by a scruffy dog, some cats and a pond full of goldfish! She
is self taught n her art and is proud of her successful career to date. She
illustrated her first book in 1985. In 2005 her illustrations in the book
Penelope and the Humongous Burp helped the book to win the Gold in the
Mom’s Choice Award. Her works have appeared in publications of over 30
different publishers and organizations throughout North America.Source:
Friend of the fiend 6: Christina Tripp in The Cartoon Fiend. Online
accessed June 2008. (2020)
Born March 3, 1923, Granby, Quebec. She worked as a journalist in television
and also as a set and costume designer for television and theatre. She has
taught at the Institute of Applied Arts, Montreal, Quebec and College du Vieux-Montreal. In 1965 she maintained her own interior design company and
worked designing interiors for such companies as Via Rail, Air Canada and
the Governor General of Canada. In 1984 her work was recognized by the
Council nationale du design. In 1986 she was inducted into the Order of
Canada. In 1998 her works received the Prix Condorcet. In 1999 she became a
Chevalier in the National Order of Quebec. In 2001 she was named to the
Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.
(2020)
née Matthieson. Born July 23, 1913,
Denmark, Wisconsin, U.S.A. Died May 21, 2007, Hampton, New Brunswick.
Erica's family returned to the country of Denmark and she grew up there. In
the late 1920's the family was on the move again and settled in Edmonton,
Alberta. In 1932 she married Kjeld Deichmann in Saint John New Brunswick and
the couple settled on a near by farm. The couple traveled in Europe where he
studied pottery and she studied weaving. Back in New Brunswick in the 1930's
they created Deichmann Pottery, Canada's 1st studio pottery. Eric would
invent and experiment with glazes for their pottery and made hand modeled
fanciful miniature animal forms. The couple raised three children.
After his death in 1956 Eric closed their studio in Sussex, New Brunswick
and stopped making pottery. In 1964 Erica married a diplomat, Milton Fowler
Gregg. In 1987 she became a Member of the Order of Canada. Eric was a
consummate volunteer working to preserve the famous covered bridges of New
Brunswick and the conservation of natural areas in her province.
(2020)
Born June 2, 1925,
Prince Rupert, British Columbia. Died December 4, 2002, Terrace, British
Columbia. Her Haida name was Skil Kew Wet which means “Magical little
woman” She learned her love of Native Arts from her grandmother. She studied
at the Vancouver College of Art and the School of Northwest Indian Art. She
enjoyed the traditional arts of the Haida women, button blankets and jeweler
but it was in the tradition male art world of carving totem poles that she
excelled and in which she would leave a lasting legacy. Some of her totem
poles erected in Terrace, British Columbia were the first in the area in
over 150 years. In March of 2002 the was presented with a National
Aboriginal Achievement Award. Northwest Community College created the Freda
Diesing School of Northwest Coast Art in her honour in Terrace, British
Columbia.Source:
Herstory: The Canadian Women’s Calendar 2006. Saskatoon: Coteau
Books, 2005.
Mary Christianne
Morris
Aboriginal artist
née Paul. Born ca 1804 Steweacke,
Nova Scotia (?). Died 1886. With an invalid husband an two young adopted
children it was up to her to provide your her family. She used her knowledge
of her native crafts to produce award winning needlework, quillwork and
basketry. Her fine artwork on clothing was sold to leading citizens in
Halifax and provided the family to a comfortable farm house in Dartmouth. In
1860 a portrait of her by William Gush was presented as a gift to the Prince
of Wales by the city of Halifax. She was a favored model as several
portraits by known artists have survived. It is unfortunate that only a few
pieces of her own artwork survive today in Maritime Museums.
Betty was
adopted and raised by French Canadian parents in Northern Ontario. She spent
some time on Vancouver Island and learned to be in touch with her
spiritually. Eventually she came to find her aboriginal father, Lindy
Louttit, and also discovered her Cree heritage. Her father named her
Wabinmeguil (White feather) and encouraged her to follow her artistic
desires. In 2005 she opened her own Ehkwateh Art Gallery in Cochrane,
Ontario. In the 1990’s her works focused on women’s art and as she began to
learn more of her heritage she grew into drawing features on her clan mother
art works. Her studio prints have found a worldwide audience. In 1998 she
published Moon Journal and Dream Log which featured her clan
mother art. She also produced, with Emily Faries, works which were aimed at
native organizations, school and educational authorities. By 2011 she found
herself overworked so she closed her Cochrane gallery and began to
focus on original works with nature themes featuring geese and wolves. Her
former husband, Lawrence Martin, a former mayor of Cochrane, helps
promote her original works. By 2012 she had relocated to Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Sources: “Cree artist changes focus” in Onotassiniik ,
Wawatay News vol. 38 no. 26 December 21, 2011. ; personal knowledge.
Louise Alexander
Born 1880. Died 1946, Vancouver, British Columbia. She studied at the
Winnipeg School of Art from 1913 to 1917 and was secretary of the Winnipeg
Art Students Sketch Club from 1914 to 1916, later serving as vice-president
in 1927 and president in 1928.Alexander came to specialize in
portraiture, winning first prize in a Sketch Club exhibition in 1920 and
exhibiting at the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts exhibition in 1924, both
with portraits. She solicited and received a number of commissions for
portraits of Winnipeg mayors.
Sources:
Dictionary of Manitoba Biography by J.M. Bumsted (University of
Manitoba, 1999)
Memorable Manitobans
by Gordon Goldsborough. Manitoba Historical Society Online (Accessed
December 2011)
Barbara Alice West Jefferys Allen
née Jefferys.
Born June 7, 1916. Died January 17, 2014, Edmonton Alberta. Barbara studied
at the Ontario College of Art in Toronto. She was mentored by several well
known artists of the day including her own father, C. W. Jefferys
(1869-1951) the well known Canadian historical illustrator. In fact several
of her black and white sketches were used in her father’s publication The
Picture Gallery of Canadian History. After her marriage to Orval Allen,
the couple settled in Edmonton, Alberta where they would raise their five
children. After the death of her husband in 1982, Barbara began filling her
time by painting watercolour landscapes. She would mount eight exhibitions of
her works which appear in private and corporate collections.
Source: Obituary, The Globe and Mail January 26, 2014.
Suggestion submitted by June Coxon, Ottawa, Ontario. (2020)
Lillian Beatrice Allen
Born November 9, 1904, Winnipeg, Manitoba. Died 1985, Victoria, British
Columbia. Graduating in arts from the
University of
Manitoba in 1926, Lillian then enrolled at the Winnipeg School of Art
until 1928, where she also taught Saturday morning classes in 1927-28. She
also studied in Toronto at the Ontario College of Education. She earned a
Masters of Science at Syracuse University, New York, U.S.A. In 1934 she
began lecturing at the University of Manitoba, Faculty of Agriculture and
Home Economics, teaching housing and design, and retiring in 1971. She
helped found the Volunteer Committee of the Winnipeg Art Gallery and was
awarded “Woman of the Year” by the YWCA in 1980. She retired to Victoria,
British Columbia in 1981. Her papers are held at the
University of
Manitoba Archives and Special Collections.
Sources: Dictionary of Manitoba Biography by
J.M. Bumsted (University of Manitoba, 1999)
Memorable Manitobans
by Gordon Goldsborough. Manitoba Historical Society Online (Accessed
December 2011) (2020)
Marie Elmina Anger
Born
December 24, 1844 Pointe-aux-Trembles (Neuville) Lower Canada (Now
Quebec). Died Novemebr 5, 1901, Quebec City, Quebec. Educated as a
teenager with the Sisters of the Good Shepard in Quebec City, she entered
the order and took vows and became Sister Marie de Jésus July 20, 1860.
While she became a good teacher herself she was better known for her talents
in painting. She was particularly good as a portrait artist and would, in
her lifetime, produce some 50 portraits of religious colleagues of her day.
People who would sit for portraits included Elisabeth Bryière, Archbishop
Baillagon, Cardinal Tachereau and Vicar General Cazeau. Through her own
canvases and her teachings, Sister Marie de Jésus left a rich cultural and
religious heritage to Quebec.
Kateryna Antonovych
née Serebriakova. Born October 23, 1887,Kharkiv,Ukraine, Died February 22,
1975. , Winnipeg, Manitoba. She studied at the St. Petersburg Medical
Academy before completing her studies at the Kiev Academy of Art. She
became an internationally known artist who studying in several western
European countries. She married art historian Dmytro Antonovych and the
family immigrated to Prague in 1923. She worked in Prague at the Museum of
Ukrainian National Struggle for Liberation and was also a director of an
Ukrainian Orphanage. She joined her daughter in Winnipeg in 1949. She opened
an art school in 1954 while she exhibited her own works across Canada.
Antonovych was active in Ukrainian women’s and various community
organizations. Her papers are at
Library and Archives
Canada.
Source: Dictionary of Manitoba Biography by J.M. Bumstead (University of
Manitoba, 1999)Memorable Manitobans by Gordon Goldsborough.
Manitoba Historical Society Online (Accessed December 2011)
Kenojuak Ashevak
Born October 3, 1927
Ikerrasak Camp, Baffin Island, Northwest Territories. Died January 8,
2013, Cape Dorset, Northwest Territories.
Kenojuak was born in an igloo to a
traditional life of her peoples. Her grandmother taught her traditional
crafts and she could repair sealskins for trade with the Hudson's Bay
Company. At 19 she married Johnniebo Ashevak (1923-1972) in an
arranged
marriage. In 1950 she tested positive with tuberculosis and was sent to
hospital in Quebec City for 3 years leaving her baby to be adopted by a
neighbouring family. While away from her home she learned to make dolls and
do beadwork crafts. In 1960 the family moved to Kinngait (Cape Dorset)
Several of her children died from disease including 3 daughters, and four
sons. Kenojuak became on of the 1st Inuit woman in Cape Dorset to begin
drawing. She also created many carvings from soapstone. In 1963 she was the
subject of a documentary film from the National Film Board. The money earned
from the film allowed the family to purchase a canoe to help Johnniebo
provide for his family by hunting. In 1967 she was inducted as a Member into
the Order of Canada and in 1982 was promoted to Companion. . After her
husband's death she married Etyguyakuua Pee (d 1977) and in 1978 she married
Joanassie Igiu. She is best known is famous for the prints made of
her work. She preferred birds as subjects of her works. She designed several
drawings for Canadian stamps and coins and in 2004 she created the 1st
Inuit-designed stained glass window for the John Bell Chapel at Appleby
College, Oakville, Ontario. In 2001 she became the 1st Inuit to have a star
on Canada's Walk of Fame in Toronto. She was a fellow of the Royal
Canadian Academy of Arts. In 2008 she received the Governor General's Award
in Visual and Media Arts from the Canada Council of the Arts. In 2017 the
$10.00 bank note in honour of Canada's 150th celebration featured Kenojuak's
Owl's Bouquet. [2020]
Margaret Ruth Bagnall
née Burns. Born June 28, 1900 Darnley, Prince Edward Island. Died 1994. She
graduated from Prince of Wales College and became a teacher. January 19,
1920 she married Frank Bagnall and the couple had two daughters. For 26
years he worked for the Island Telephone Company but still found time beyond
career and family to participate in her avocation of writing and painting as
well as being active in the Women’s Institute. She was awarded a life
membership in the WI in recognition of her contributions to the
organization. She wrote short stories and historical events and also wrote
plays for the entertainment of the local area. She had dabbled in oils since
the 1950’s and in 1973 in celebration of the PEI Centennial she researcher
the history and painted 15 paintings of houses and 4 churches that were
build of local PEI stone.
Source: Outstanding women of Prince Edward Island
Compiled by the Zonta Club of Charlottetown, 1981.
Shirley Bear
Aboriginal Artist
Born Negootgook Reserve, New Brunswick. Shirley attended the College Maillet
in Saint-Basile, New Brunswick and followed this with studies in photography
and painting in New Hampshire. U.S.A. Her paintings had appeared in
exhibitions throughout North America. In 1990 she served as curator for a
touring exhibition of art by Aboriginal women, Changers: A Spiritual
Renaissance. Catherine Martin made Shirley the subject of her short film for
the National Film Board. In 2011 she was inducted into the Order of Canada.
Shirley has authored 6 books
Molly Lamb Bobak
Born February 25, 1920 Vancouver, British Columbia. Died March 2, 2014
Fredericton, New Brunswick. Her father was a geologist by profession but he
also had a profound interest in the arts and the circle of family friends
included many Canadian artists. This family association was no doubt a
welcoming atmosphere for a young artist who studied at the Vancouver School
of Art. In November 1942 she enlisted in the Canadian Women's Army Corp. Her
talents did not go unnoticed and she became the first woman to be officially
designated as a Canadian war artist. During the War in London she met her
husband Bruno Bobak. The couple would have two children. After VE-Day she
went to Holland to record the devastation of the war. It was during her
service years of World War II that she met her future husband. In 1950, with
a grant from the French government she painted her impressions of this
European country. In She would return often to paint in France. At home in
Canada, she is busy at the design department at the Vancouver School of Art,
the University of British Columbia and the Art Centre at the University of
New Brunswick. She has also used her artistic talents to illustrate several
books including her own Wild Flowers of Canada. 1995 she and her artist
husband Bruno were inducted with the Order of Canada.
Source: The Canadian Encyclopedia Online
Accessed 2007)
Pauline Boutal
née
LeGoff. Born 1894, Brittany, France. Died 1992, Saint Boniface, Manitoba.
Her family immigrated to Manitoba in 1907, settling first on Lake Manitoba
and later in Winnipeg. Her family members were active workers in stained
glass, and she learned to draw in childhood. In 1918 she joined Brigden’s as
a fashion artist, and she remained there until 1941, in charge of designs
for the Eaton’s catalogue where all items sold were drawn by artists. She
joined Le Cercle Molière Theatre with her husband in 1925, and the couple
soon became responsible for most of the design work. She replaced her
husband as artistic director upon his death in 1941. Her works were
exhibited annually from 1932 to 1975 with the Manitoba Society of Artists,
in various group shows at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, and in four solo
exhibitions at the Centre Cultural franco-manitobain in Saint-Boniface. In
1941 she retired from commercial art work to concentrate on her landscape
and portrait paintings. She was commissioned to paint the Mayors of Saint
Boniface. In 1963 she was awarded a
Golden Boy Award,
in 1970 from the Manitoba Historical Society she received the
Manitoba Centennial
Medal . She was inducted into the
Order of Canada
in 1973. She also received the
Queen Elizabeth II
Silver Jubilee Medal in 1992.Sources: Dictionary of
Manitoba Biographyby
J. M. Bumsted
(University of Manitoba Press, 1999) ; Memorable Manitobans. Profile by
Gordon Goldsborough. (Accessed December 2011)
Henrietta Hancock
Britton
née
Hancock.
Born May 20, 1873, Ealing West England. Died July 27, 1963, Toronto,
Ontario. She immigrated to Canada with her parents in 1874, where she lived
in both Brandon, Manitoba and Toronto, Ontario. She trained in art in
Toronto for three years before becoming an apprentice in the private studio
of William Cruickshank. She taught art at the Bishop Strachan School
and Moulton College in Toronto. In 1901 she studied painting in Europe for
three months. In 1906 she came to Brandon, Manitoba, and taught at
Brandon College
as Director of Art, where she remained until 1911. While in Brandon she
founded the Brandon Art Club. In 1911 she went for another year of study in
England, and upon her return she decided to give up teaching art and devote
her time to painting. While in England she married artist Harry Britton.
After settling in Cornwall for a number of years the couple returned to
Canada, moving to Toronto in 1914. . Her commissions include a mural at the Ossington Avenue Church and one at Scott Mission, both in Toronto. Britton
exhibited with the Royal Canadian Academy from 1905-1946 and the Art
Association of Montreal in 1945 and 1946. Her works are owned by several
institutions including the National Gallery of Canada.
Source:
Memorable Manitobans Profile by Angela Graham. online. (accessed
December 2011); Canadian Women Artists History Initiative. Online
(accessed December 2011) (2021)
Mary
Annora Brown
Born 1899, Red River, Alberta. Died 1987, Deep Cove, British
Columbia. Annora Brown attended the Ontario College of Art between 1925
through 1929.After leaving the College of Art Annora taught at Mount Royal
College in Calgary for two years before returning to her home in Fort
Macleod, Alberta. In the 1930's she painted water colour and oil landscapes
of her beloved Alberta. During the Great Depression she painted 'portraits'
of flowers' that she sold for $1.00. Annora wanted to study, identify, and
preserve the memory of as much culture and flora as she could. She helped
introduce art into local schools and from 1945 through 1950 she taught at
the Banff School of Fine Art in Alberta. In 1954 she published the book,
Old Man's Garden, which included written sketches of aboriginal culture
along with works of the local flora. The book was republished again in
1970.She was one of the 1st people to capture lifestyle and customs of the
Blackfoot. In 1958, for two years, she was Commissioned by the Glenbow
Museum to paint 200 of the most rare flowers particular to the Fort Macleod
area. Annora actually completed 500 paintings an average of three paintings
a week. In 1965 she relocated to live in British Columbia. In 1981 she
published her autobiography, Sketches From Life. She was the 1st woman to be
a member of the Alberta Artist Society. Annora is also featured in the book:
By a Lady: Celebrating Three Centuries of Art by Canadian Women,
1992. (2020)
Rebecca Ann Burke
Born October 25, 1946. In
1972 After earning a Bachelor degree in English Literature from the
University of Guam, Agana, Guam in 1969 Rebecca earned a Master of Fine Arts
from Ohio State University, U.S.A. This artist has shown her works in
exhibitions in the Canadian Maritimes, Alberta, Quebec, British Columbia and
the United States. In 2010 she became
a professor emeritus in fine arts at Mount Allison University, Sackville,
New Brunswick where she taught painting, drawing and contemporary art from
1980 through 2009.(2019)
Ghitta Calserman-Roth.
Born March 2, 1923 Montreal, Quebec. Died November 25, 2005. Ghitta
attended the Parsons School of Design, New York, U.S.A. from 1939-1943.
Returning to Montreal in 1947 she opened the Montreal Artists School.
She served as school principal with the school accommodating many
returned war veterans until it was sold in 1952. At the beginning of the
1960's she studied at the Ecole des beaux arts, Montreal. Here she mixed her
appreciation of art she had seen during trips to Mexico where she studied
murals. A very talented artist she is considered an outstanding
example of creativity of women artists that have characterized a century of
art in Montreal. She was a member of the Royal Canadian Academy. She
was part of the Jewish Painters of Montreal which have left a legacy
depicting expressionistic images of social realism of the 1930's and 1940's.
She received the Canadian Centennial Medal in 1967 and in 1975 she earned
the Purchase Prize and Best Graphic Imaage Award from the Ontario Society of
Artists. In 200 she became the 1st artist to win the Governor General's
Award.
Florence Carlyle
Born 1864,
Galt, Canada West (Now Ontario) Died 1923, Crowborough Sussex, England. As a
young student she studied in Paris, France. In 1983 she exhibited her works
in Paris and at the Chicago World’s Fair. Back in Canada by 1896 she taught
at the Toronto Girl’s School Havergal College. in 1897 became the first
woman to be elected an Associate of the
Royal Canadian
Academy. In 1898 she had established studios in London, Ontario
and Woodstock, Ontario. She was well known for her landscapes, domestic
interior and her portraiture. In 1899 she relocated to New York City, New
York, U.S.A. where she opened a successful studio. During World War l she
volunteered for hospital work in England and sold some of her paintings to
aid the Red Cross Society. She continued to exhibit her works at notable
centres including the Royal Academy, the Royal Academy of Canada, the
Canadian National Exhibition and the Pan Am Exhitibition. In 1912 she
settled in England after having travelled throughout Europe. Some of her
works are owned by the National Gallery of Canada. Source:
Waterloo Region Hall of Fame. Online. (Accessed July 2014)
Emily Carr
Born
December 13, 1871 Victoria, British Columbia. Died March 2,1945
Victoria, British Columbia. . Emily is perhaps one of the most famous women
painters in Canada. Her works bring alive the beautiful West Coast
scenes with vibrant and distinct images. The swirling stokes of her brush
created unique images of her paintings. Her canvases hang in many art
galleries including the National Gallery in Ottawa. Totem poles of West
Coast native peoples were also one of her favourite studies. Did you know
she also wrote books? After suffering a couple of heart attacks in the late
1930's Emily lived with her sister Alice to recover. In 1940 and 1942 she
suffered a stroke and anther heart attack. She turned her attention to
writing with her 1st book
Klee Wyck, published in 1941, garnered her the Governor-General's
Award for non-fiction. You will find books showing her art and the books she
wrote at your local public library.
Jane Margaret
Carson Champaign
née
Carson.
Born 1930 Toronto,
Ontario. Died March 28, 2008 Southampton, British Columbia. Jane obtained
her Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of Toronto and continued her
studies at the Atelier d'Art sacré in Paris, France. Her works are
landscapes in watercolour and acrylic. She has had numerous solo shows and
her works grace several private collections. She is also an editor and
writer having worked for several Canadian publications including being
assistant Editor for the Canadian Composer/Le Compositeur Canadien
form 1971-1978. She contributed numerous articles to this and other
publications on Canadian composers and musicians. She is a founding member
of the Toronto Watercolour Society. She married Jean-Remi Champagne and the
couple had one daughter.
Shirley Cheechoo
(Stage name Cactus Rose).
Born June 18, 1952 Eastmain, Quebec. When she was just nine she was sent
away from her family to the Shinwauk Residential School, Sault Ste Marie,
Ontario. She is a Cree artist, actor, writer, director, singer, and a
producer who has been successful in reaching back to her native roots for
inspiration. She attended classes at the Manitou Arts Foundation during the
summer of 1966. She wrote about her experiences at residential school in the
1991 play: Path with No Moccasins. It was for her part of the healing
process for the trauma she endured at the school. She has participated in
several exhibitions of her art work of acrylic, oils and mixed medium on
canvas and stained glass. Her works have been used for Christmas cards by
both UNICEF and Amnesty International. She has appeared in film, TV, radio
and theater productions with her 1st role in 1985 on CBC's First Nations TV
series Spirit Bay. In 1997 she had a role on CBC TV series The Rez.
Shirley is the 1st First Nations women to write, produce, direct and act in
a feature length film from Canada.
In July 2015 she was appointed
chancellor of Brock University, the 1st woman and 1st aboriginal chancellor
for the institution. Shirley and her
partner Blake Debassige co-own
Kasheese Studios art
gallery. She is also the president of Spoken Song film production company
and founded the
Weengushk Film Institute
on
Manitoulin Island
that will train, develop and guide independent filmmakers
Anna Gertrude Lawson Cheney
Born June 22, 1897 Windsor, Nova Scotia. Died November 3, 1985. Evan as a
child Nan had an interest in art and the form of the human body. She would
soon earn her place as a portrait painter and the first medical artist in
British Columbia. A friend of Emily Carr, the famous west coast artist, they
were encouraging one another well before Carr’s works became generally
accepted as the art treasures that they were. She gathered information on
Emily until Dece4mber 1979. Suggested reading: Dear Nan: Letters of Emily
Carr by Nan Cheney and Humphrey Toms.
Source: The History of Metropolitan Vancouver. (accessed June 19, 2009)
Paraskeva Clark
née Plistik. Born St Petersburg, Russia. Died August
10. 1986. This accomplished painter studied in the Soviet Free Studios in
Russia from 1917-1921 but left Russia for Paris, France on the death of her
husband. She moved to Canada with her new Canadian husband Philip Clark in
1931. Settling in the Toronto area she brought some real flair to the
Toronto art scene in the 1930's and 1940's.
Heather Collins
Born Montreal, Quebec. She has been
drawing since she was very young. She has illustrated over forty children’s
books over the past twenty years. She is the recipient of the 1995
Information Book Award and the 1995 Ruth Schwartz Children’s Book Award
(Picture Book Category) for A Pioneer Story: The Daily Life of a Canadian
Family in 1840. Heather Collins lives in Toronto with her husband and
two children.
Emily Coonan
Born March 25, 1885, Pointe Saint-Charles, Montreal, Quebec.
Died June 23, 1971. Encouraged as a youth to pursue her artistic talents she
took art classes at the Conseil des Arts & Manufactures and in 1905 she
studied at the Art Association of Montreal. She was a member of the artist's
Beaver Hall Group. Emily is best known for her painting of impressionist
figures. She continued to exhibit her art in until 1933. Her works
earned accolades and in 1913 she was awarded a traveling bursary from the
National Gallery of Canada. With the threat and onslaught of World War l her
trip to Europe was delayed until 1920. In Europe she embraced modernism
painting and her works became influential in Canada. Her paintings
were exhibited in the British Empire Exhibition in London. She continued
painting all her life but after 1933 she withdrew from public exhibiting of
her works producing works for family and friends. Some of her works are held
at the National Gallery of Canada. (2020)
Irma Sophia Coucill
Born August 8, 1918. Died November 29, 2015. An
artist and editor, she began her career by working as artistic editor for
various Canadian newspapers including the Globe and Mail, The Telegram
and the The Star. She is mainly known for her portraits of Canadian
sports figures, prominent business figures, broadcasters and
physicians. Her portraits number in the hundreds. In 1958 she
completed 58 portraits for the Canadian Sport Hall of Fame which was located
in Toronto at that time. She would go on to work for the Hockey Hall, the
Business Hall, the Indigeneous Hall, the Aviation Hall and the Medical Hall.
For Canada's 1967 Centennial she did a book of portraits of the Fathers of
Confederation. and are displayed in several Halls of Fame. Her works
have been used to produce commemorative coins and are also considered
prominent pieces in several museums. She married Walter Jackson Coucill of
the Royal Canadian Air Force and the couple had two children.
(2019)
Roselyn 'Rody' Margaret Courtice
née Kenny. Born 1891, Renfrew County, Ontario. Died 1973. 1920-1924 she was
one of the 1st women to attend the Ontario College of Art, Toronto on
scholarship, where she studied under the Arthur Lismer (1895-1969). The next
year she worked in the library at the college. She would go on to study at
the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A. in 1927 and then
continued studies in New York, U.S.A., London , England and Paris France.
She was an assistant instructor at the Port Hope Summer School and taught at
the Doon School of Art. In 1950 she took summer studies at the Provincetown,
Massachusetts, U.S.A. Her 1st husband Henry Lloyd Hammond was killed
in action on August 4, 1918. She later married Andrew Roy Courtice. Rody was
one of the 1st women in the Canadian modernist movement. When she painted
landscapes she was invited to exhibit with the famous Group of Seven
painters. In 1933 she became a member of the newly founded Canadian Group of
Painters. During a tour of the near north in Ontario in the 1930’s she
painted industrial subjects. Her paintings have not only been shown in
North America but also in London, England, Brazil, and Paris, France and in
1939 at the New York World’s Fair. She was a member of the Royal Canadian
Academy of Arts, The Ontario Society of Artists, the Canadian Society of
Painters oin Water Colours and the Canadian Society of Graphic Art. In
1945/6 she werved as President of the Ontario Branch of the Federation of
Canadian Artists. Source: Canadian Women of Note, Canadian Womens Press
Club, 1994.
Julia Crawford
Born 1896 Kingston, New Brunswick. Died 1968. She began her
working career as a teacher but soon entered the Pratt Institute in Boston
in the United States in 1925. While at the Institute show would win honours
for her Design. She returned to Saint John, New Brunswick to teach at
the city's Vocational school from 1928 through 1944. While she painted in
various medium perhaps her favourite was water colour.
Marion Margaret Cuming
Born June 26, 1936. She
would do her post graduate studies in teaching but chose to study art in
France, Mexico and Italy before returning to Canada. She has used her
artistic talents to help emotionally disturbed children and has worked with
Canadian street kids. She has worked closely with UNESCO related activities.
For her personal artistic expression she enjoys drawing Canadian heritage
subjects.
Kate Livingston Cumming
née Taylor.
Born 1889 , Chatham, Ontario (?). Died 1971, London, Ontario. At the Chatham
High School her talents in art were recognized with the Pile Gold Medal for
promise in art. In 1910-1911 she attended the Detroit College of Art and
here, for the first time she saw miniature paintings. While she would enjoy
painting landscapes and gardens it would be her specialization in portraits
that is remembered. In 1912 she attended the Ontario College of Art where
she learned from such notable artists as Arthur Lismer. Upon graduation the
Ontario College of Art appointed her as an associate in the Department of
Drawing and Painting. From 1915-1917 her works were shown at the Royal
Canadian Academy exhibition. In 1922 here paintings were shown at the
Canadian National Exhibition. It was about this time that she married a
Methodist Minister, Robert Cumming. There was little time for her artistic
pursuits as she settled down to the busy life as a minister’s wife and
raising three children. The family moved often, living in numerous small
Ontario towns. Kate began painting again to supplement the family income but
was unable to maintain a Gallery she had opened in St Catherines,
Ontario. Theft and loss of numerous works plagued her career at this time.
In 1938 the Federated Women’s Institutes of Canada commissioned her to do a
portrait of Lady Tweedsmuir, wife of the Governor General. This portrait is
on display at Governor General residence. In 1951 and again in 1956 she
exhibited at the Annual Western Ontario Exhibition, London, Ontario. In 1953
she had a solo exhibition at the London Public Library and Museum followed
several years latter whit shared showings at the McIntosh Gallery. In the
1960’s she was bedridden with poor health and stroke left unable to paint.
from which she never recovered. Sources: “Our
forgotten artist” by Tom Spears, Ottawa Citizen October 5, 2013 ;
Correspondence with Tom Spears; Canadian Women Artists History Initiative
Online (Accessed November 2013)
Gertrude E. Cutts
née Spurr. Born England 1858. Died 1941. She studied in
England at the Scarborough School of Art and the Lambeth Art Schools as well
as in New York. This accomplished artist moved to Canada in 1891. She
married Toronto Artist William Cutts in 1909. She was a member of the
Ontario Society of Art and an Associate of the Royal Canadian Academy.
Marian Mildred Dale -Scott
née Dale.
Born June 26, 1906 Montreal, Quebec. Died November 28, 1993.Montreal,
Quebec. Marion enjoyed art as a youth and actually had her 1st show of her
works in 1918. Marion studied at the Ecole des beaux arts, Montreal,
Quebec and the Slade School of Art, London, England. In 1928
she married lawyer and poet F. R. Scott (1899-1985) and the couple had
one son. In the 1930's they were both active in the Co-operative
Commonwealth Federation (C.C.F). Mainly a painter of landscapes she
also painted the people of Montreal in the depression era. Her works showed
people up against machines and hard times.
Her works were organized geometrically as she experimented with fresh art
forms. She taught from 1935-1938 at the Children's Art Centre set up by Dr.
Norman Bethune (1822-1939) and joined the Contemporary Arts Society in 1939.
Between 1948 and 1977 she held nine solo exhibitions of her work at
galleries in Montreal, Toronto and Quebec City. A pacifist she campaigned
for nuclear disarmament in the 1950's and against the war in Vietnam in the
1960's. In 200 a biography was published, Marian Dale Scott: Pioneer of
Modern Art by Esther Trepanier. .
.
Jean Bruce Dawson
née Anderson. Born August
23,1912 Calgary, Alberta. Died August 4, 1999 Victoria, British Columbia.
She graduated in 1936 as a nurse but with the great depression of the 1930's
she was unable to follow her plans and continue studies to become a
doctor. Her marriage to Douglas Dawson would lead to a family of four
children and a relationship of some 60 years. When the family lived in
Guyana, Africa and Burma she volunteered her nursing expertise. While
traveling in the tropics she gained an interest in painting. Jean had
actually began studies at the Institute of Technology and Art in Calgary in
the 1930's prior to studying to be a nurse and at the age of 74 years she
earned her Bachelor Degree in Fine Arts from the University of Victoria in
British Columbia. She enjoyed her art but seldom showed her work. She was a
member of the Federation of Canadian Artists and joined a local portrait
group and the Victoria Sketch Club. She continued her volunteer efforts by
working for Meals on Wheels in her home community until she was 86 years
old.
(2019)
Kathleen Frances Daly
Born May 28, 1889 Nappanee, Ontario. Died August 31, 1994.
As young artist she attended the University of Toronto and the Ontario
College of Art in 1924. She continued her education in Europe at the
Academie de la Grande Chaumiere in Paris , France and in the United States
at the Parsons’ School of Design in New York City. In 1929 she married a
fellow artist, George Pepper and the two spent a life of travel and painting
together. She is well known for her paintings of Montagnais, the Charlevoix
and the Stoney Indians of Alberta. She also painted landscapes. Her
paintings may be found in the Legislative Buildings in Edmonton, Alberta,
the Banff Public Library, and the London Public Library as well as in major
galleries such as the National Gallery in Ottawa, the Lord Beaverbrook
Museum in Fredericton and in the Canadian Embassy in Denmark.
Alma Duncan
Born October 2, 1917 Paris, Ontario. Died Ottawa, Ontario December 15, 2004.
She studied in Hamilton, Ontario and at McGill University in Montreal,
Quebec. From 1936-1943 she worked at a Montreal advertising firm. By 1943
she officially documented the lives of war workers and members of the
Canadian Women’s Army Corps considered her their unofficial artist. Alma and
Audrey McLaren, an Ottawa photographer produced animated films under the
name of Dunclaren Productions. One of their first productions, Folksong
Fantasy was nominated for a British Film Award. Alma participated in
numerous national and international art exhibition. She also sat on juries
for the Canadian Film Award. From the 1960’s she devoted her energies mainly
to her paintings. She taught art to school children of and on from 1949
through the 1980’s. In the 1970’s she designed two series of postage stamps
for Canada Post. Maple in four seasons in 1971 and Floral Aerogramme in
1973. She travelled an honed her craft wherever she went in Europe, Japan,
Hong Kong, the Caribbean, Costa Rica as well she spent some time in the
Canadian Arctic. Her works reside innumerous local, provincial and national
galleries including the National Gallery of Canada.
Sources: Alma Duncan, Visual Artist by Valerie Knowles; D & E Lake
http://delake.com accessed August 2011.
Evelyn 'Eve' Alberta Cleverly Dunn
Born October
29, 1900, Fleming, Saskatchewan. Died July 7, 1994, Wawanesa, Manitoba. As a
young girl of 14 with her father serving overseas in World War l, Eve began
working at the Audit Department of the T. Eaton Department Store in order to
help support her family. He boss noticed some of her sketches and gave her
additional work hours drawing for the famous Eaton’s catalogue. Encouraged
in her art she attended art schools in Mexico and Canada. She married Henry
Dunn, a Canadian National Railroad worker and the couple lived at various
cities, towns and villages throughout Manitoba. Eve transformed her
love of the prairie landscape onto her canvas. Her works were shown
throughout Manitoba and Canada. In 1974 she received a Good Citizen Award
from the Lieutenant-Governor of Manitoba. Source:
Goldsborough, Gordon. ‘Evelyn Alberta Cleverly “Eve” Dunn’ in Memorable
Manitobans. Online. (Accessed September 2014.)
Mary Ella Digham
Born January 30, 1857 Port Burwell,
Ontario. Died September 6,1938. She studied art at the Ontario Western
School of Art and Design with subsequent studies in New York and Paris. In
addition to exhibiting her work in North America and abroad she was the
first Head of the Department of Art at McMaster University in Hamilton,
Ontario, founder of the Women's Art Association of Canada and founder of the
first International Society of Women Painters and Sculptors. She was the
first to bring live nude models into a woman's studio in Canada. She worked
tirelessly for women's equal opportunities in the art world. She spearheaded
the creation of the "State Diner Service" of the Governor General, a 192
piece china dinnerware hand painted by Canadian women artists and presented
to Lady Aberdeen.
Nominated by the Women's Association of Canada. Source: Mary Ella
Dignam, biography Women's Art Association of Canada - History
http;//www.womensartofcanada.ca/history
accessed July 2011
Mary Alexandra Eastlake
née Bell. Born 1864 Ontario. Died 1951.
She studied art in Montréal, New York and Paris. She returned to Montreal to
teach art and married British landscape painter Charles Herbert Eastlake.
She exhibited frequently in Canada, London and other places. Her works are
signed with both her maiden name and her married name. Her portrait of Maude
Abbott was the basis for a Canadian postage stamp tribute to Abbott.
Gathie Falk
Born January 31, 1928 Alexander, Manitoba. In 1930 the family moved to
southern Manitoba before finally settling in Winnipeg, Manitoba. At 16 she
left school to work to help her family. She would complete her high school
education with correspondence courses. At 19 she and her mover relocated to
Vancouver, British Columbia. She taught elementary school until 1965
when she decided to make her career in art. An artist who works with
multimedia producing works in ceramics, painting and papier-mâché. She
took her subjects from daily life such as a ceramic sculpture of fruit pies.
She has has had group and solo exhibitions of her works across North
America, France and Japan. Her works are collected by the Vancouver Art
Gallery, the Winnipeg Art Gallery, the National Art Gallery in Ottawa as
well as by private collectors. In 2002 she was inducted into the Order of
British Columbia. In 2013 she earned the Audain Prize for Lifetime
Achievement in the Visual Arts. (2017)
Philippa Mary Faulkner
née Burrows.
Born 1917 Belleville, Ontario. Died February 3, 2001.
She studied at the Parsons School of Fine and Applied Art, Advertising &
Design, New York City, New York, U.S.A. in 1940. From 1942-1947 she studied
at the The Doon School of Fine Art under Carl Shaefer and F.H. Varley.
She worked with acrylic paints,
mixed media, multi media and watercolours. Here works reflected the
modernist movement. She held solo shows at the Eaton's Fine Art
Gallery in Toronto. She has won international awards. Her work is in many
public and private collections. Philippa married Dr. George
Faulkner (1908-1955) and the couple had two children. (2018)
Agnes Dunbar Moodie Fitzgibbon
SEE - Writers - Authors Agnes Dunbar Moodie Fitzgibbon
Chamberlin
Betty Roodish Goodwin
Born March 19, 1928 Montreal, Quebec. Died
December 1, 2008 Montreal, Quebec. After graduating High school she studied
design at Valentine's Commercial School of art, Montreal. By the 1940's she
had a career as a painter and printmaker. In the 1960's she studied
printmaking at Sir George William University, Montreal. She went on to
represent Canada at leading international events. Even after participating
in numerous exhibitions and solo shows of her art she became dissatisfied
with her own work she destroyed much of her pieces and began in 1968 to
limit herself to drawings. Betty
received several awards, including the Prix Paul-Émile Borduas in 1986, the
Gershon Iskowitz Prize of the Gershon Iskowitz Foundation and the Art
Gallery of Ontario in 1995, the Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton Award of the
Canada Council for the Arts in 1981, the Harold Town Prize in 1998, John
Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in 1988. She married a civil engineer
Martin Goodwin and the couple had one son.
An artist who trained in Canada and
Europe, her works are represented in the collections of the National Gallery
in Ottawa.
In 1996 Goodwin donated 150 of her works to the Art Gallery
of Ontario, which has the largest collection of her work. That same year she
earned the Harold Town Prize. In 2003, she was honored with the Governor
General's Award and was made an Officer of the Order of Canada.
Hortense Crompton Gordon
née
Mattice. Born November 24, 1886, (some sources report the year as 1887 or
1889) Hamilton, Ontario. Died November 6, 1961, Hamilton, Ontario. As a
child she attended Saturday morning art classes at the Hamilton Art School.
After the retirement of her father in 1903 she lived with relatives in
Chatham, Ontario where she began to study and paint china. Her 1st
exhibition of china was on December 14-16, 1908 at a local Chatham hotel.
In 1916, after the death of her father she returned to Hamilton and in the
fall of 1918 she began work at the Hamilton Technical School as an assistant
to John Gordon whom she married August 3, 1920. She continued teaching at
the school until 1951, the last twenty years as head of the Art Department,
succeeding her husband. The husband and wife would travel to Europe in the
summers and Hortense began to exclusively paint landscapes. In the 1930’s
she began experimenting with abstract painting, becoming one of the 1st
abstract artists probably in Canada. From 1941-1945 she studied at the
Cranbrook Academy of Art Gloucester, Massachusetts, U.S.A. and she abandoned
realism to concentrate on non-objective painting. In 1948 she had
garnered national interest in her works and she was named honorary president
of the Contemporary Artists of Hamilton. In 1952 she became the oldest
member of the group known as Painters Eleven. She was a member of the
Canadian Society of Graphic Artists and the Royal Canadian Academy of Art,
the Ontario Society of Artists, The North Shore Arts Association of
Gloucester, Massachusetts, the international Federation of Art, Zurich,
Germany and the Art Teachers Guild, London, England. She was also one of the
founders of The Women’s Art Association of Hamilton. Hortense was inducted
into the Hamilton Gallery of Distinction in 1989. She is considered a trail
blazer of the popularization of modern art in Canada and is featured in the
book;
Painters Eleven; The Wild Ones of Canadian Art published in Vancouver by
Douglas & McIntyre in 2010.
Elizabeth Frances Hall
née Amherst. Born 1774, England. Died June 18, 1826, Quebec. On April 3,
1799 she Married John Hale in London, England. The couple had 4 daughters
and 8 sons. In June 1799 she husband was appointed deputy paymaster general
of the British troops stationed in the Canadas. She accompanied her husband
and the couple settled in Quebec City. Elizabeth took up painting in
watercolours. She enjoyed painting urban and rural landscapes. She left her
adopted country with works which focused on interesting structures and
natural sites such as waterfalls. One print which has circulated widely
depicts York (Toronto) in 1804 just shortly after it had been founded. She
left a small sketchbook of various landscapes depicting the surroundings in
which she lived including scenes of their seigneury of Sainte Anne de la
Pérade where the family spent summers. Some of her drawings are in the
collections of the Public Archives of Canada.
Source: Dictionary of Canadian Biography Vol. 6. Page
9.
Mary Riter Hamilton
Born February 11, 1873, Teeswater, Ontario. Died 1954, Vancouver, British Columbia. Shortly
after her birth her family relocated to Clearwater, Manitoba. At 18 in 1889
she married Charles W. Hamilton and the couple settled in Port Arthur
(Thunder Bay), Ontario. After the death of her husband in 1893 she returned
to Manitoba and began painting china. She studied art in Toronto and then in
Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Spain and France. She returned to Winnipeg
in 1906. In 1911 she had a gallery show in Toronto and in 1914 she moved to
Victoria, Ontario. Living in British Columbia at the end of World War l she
was commissioned by the Amputation Club of B.C. to do paintings of French
battlefields. From 1919-1922 she painted with whatever materials she could
find recording over 300 paintings the destruction of the war. In 1988 The
War Amps would produce an award-winning documentary film, No Man’s Land, on
her experiences. In 1926 she donated 227 works to the Public Archives of
Canada. Partially blind she retired to Vancouver, British Columbia where she
died in poverty.
Source: Susan Merritt, Her Story II: Women from Canada’s
Past, 1995.
Efa Prudence Heward
Born 1896, Montreal, Quebec. Died March
19, 1947 Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.. During World War l she was
in England serving as a Red Cross volunteer. She studied art at the Art
Association of Montreal and the Académie Colarossi in Paris, France in 1925
and 1926. In 1929 her career got a major boost
when her painting, Girl on a Hill, won the top prize in the
Governor
General Willingdon
competition organized by the
National
Gallery of Canada.
Her 1st showing of her words was at the Royal Academy of Arts,
Toronto, Ontario. Known for her impressive figure painting she was a member
of the Beaver Hall Group. Un 1932 she had her 1st solo exhibition in
Montreal, Quebec. She was a co-founder of the Canadian Group of Painters in
1933 and became a member of the Contemporary Arts Society in 1939. She was
close friends with the members of the Group of Seven and was invited to
exhibit with them. After an automobile accident in 1939 she slowed down
until 1945 When she had to give up painting. The National Gallery of
Canada is pleased to own four of her oil paintings. In 1996 her biography
was written and included as a chapter in Portraits of Life.On
July 2, 2010,
Canada Post
released a commemorative stamp and a souvenir sheet in honour of Heward as
part of its Art Canada collection. (2019)
Marjorie Jane Hodgson
née Bothing. Born March 30,1932, Hamilton, Ontario. Died March 7,
2018 Scarborough, Ontario. She showed an interest in art as a youth
and attended the Ontario College of Art. In 1951 she married Joshua Hodgson
(1950- ) and the couple had 3 children. Her paintings are
known and have been shown internationally having been displayed in Japan,
Mexico and England. She enjoys teaching watercolour art at various private
and public colleges. 1974-75 she was Director, Canadian Society of Artists
in Water Colour and 1977-78 she was Director of the Ontario Society of
Artists.Her
paintings are part of many private and public collections including the
Royal Collection ant Windsor Castle, England. (2019)
Gunhild Hotte
Born May 5,
1945, Flensburg, Schleswig/Holstein, Germany. Gunhild emigrated to Canada in
1957. She settled in Northern Ontario near Cochrane, Ontario and took
courses in Visual Arts and Crafts Diploma from Northern College in Timmons,
Ontario, in 1984. She earned her Bachelor in Fine arts in 1988 and a
Bachelor of Education in 1989 from Queens University, Kingston, Ontario. She
then attended the University of Windsor in southern Ontario and earned a MFA
in 1992. She takes much of inspiration fro nature and the uniqueness of the
Northern Canadian landscape. She has participated in numerous art shows and
won Best of show the Scarab Club, Detroit, Michigan, U.S.A. in 1992. Her
acrylic and oil works have won Best in Show in 1995 and 2002 at the Northern
Impressions and Northern Telephone Exhibitions, Timmins. Her works are
included in the Art Bank of Canada, Queens University, Windsor University,
Essex Board of Education, Northern Ontario Railway, St. Michael’s Printshop
St. John’s , Newfoundland, Northern College and the Timmins Museum National
Exhibition Centre to name a few. Gunhild takes an active interest in her
home community and is a moving force behind the Cochrane Art Guild and the
Northern Ontario Art Group. Source:
Gunhild Hotte, Cochrane, Ontario
Yvonne McKague Housser
Born August
4, 1898, Toronto, Ontario. Died January 26, 1996, Toronto, Ontario. She
began her studies in art at the Ontario College of Art (OCA) from 1915-1920.
In 1921 she took one of what would be several year long trips to continue
studies in art. Returning from France she turned to teaching at OCA. She had
her first exhibition of her works at the Royal Canadian Academy which was
followed in 1924 with an exhibition with the Ontario Society of Artists.
After another year in France she was back teaching and from 1928-1931 she
exhibited in 3 Group of Seven showings. In 1933 she was a founding member of
the Canadian Group of Painters and the Federation of Canadian Artists. In
1935 she married Frederick Hauser, an author who wrote about the famous
Group of Seven painters. In 1949 she retired from the OCA and taught in
Kitchener at the Doon School of Fine Arts as well as at the Ryerson
Polytechnical Institute (now Ryerson University) in Toronto. She also
continued her trips to continue learning in Cape Cod, Mexico and the West
Indies. She received the Baxter Purchase Award at the Ontario Society of
Artists. In 1984 she was inducted into the Order of Canada. Her paintings
are in the permanent collections of the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto,
the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, Ontario, the Art Gallery of
Hamilton, Ontario, the McMichael Collection in Kleinberg, Ontario, the
University of Toronto and Victoria University, Ontario, the Public Library
and Art Museum in London, Ontario, and in many private collections.
Sources: Yvonne McKague Hauser Collection. E.J. Pratt Library, University of
Victoria Campus, University of Toronto. Online. Accessed July 2013. Yvonne
McKague Housser Collections. National Gallery of Canada. Online Accessed
July 2013 Suggestion
submitted by Jeanne Ouellette, Ottawa, Ontario.
Elisapee Ishulutag
Inuit artist
Born
1925 Kangirterjuak Camp, Northwest Territories. Died December 9, 2018
Pangnirtung, Northwest Territories. As a child Elisapee and her family
lived the traditional nomadic life of the Inuit peoples living off the
land. She would use the memories of her traditional life in her art work
as an adult. Settling in her 40's in Pangnirtug she worked in print and
tapestry workshops for over 40 years. Many of her oil stick works show
family members in traditional life activities. Her later works reflect
concern for suicide crisis of youth today and concerns for effects of
climate change on the life in the far north. She is a strong
believer that art can help to bridge the generation gap for people of
the far north. Her works have long been included in exhibitions across
Canada and samples of her works are included in numerous public and
private collections. In 2010 she appeared in the film Inuit Knowledge
and Climate Change. This was the 1st Inuklitut language film to address
global warming.
Helen Kalvak
Born 1901,
Tahiryuak, Victoria Island, Northwest Territories. Died May 7, 1984 Holman,
Northwest Territories. She lived a traditional nomadic life of her peoples.
In 1960 her husband , Edward Manayak, died and she and her daughter settled
In Holman, Northwest Territories. She worked to establish the Holman Eskimo
Co-operative and began to take an interest in art. In 1965 her art
works were turned prints and became a popular purchase from the co-op. Her
works depicted her people in traditional life and roles. In 1975 she was
inducted into the Royal Canadian Academy of the Arts followed in 1978 with
induction into the Order of Canada. In 1976 Canada Post used one of her
works on a 17 cent postage stamp. The School in Holman is named in her
honour; By 1978 she had produced over an estimated 2000 works of arts with
prints being sold worldwide. Source: Helen
Kalvak, Spiritwriter online accessed 2008.
Partial Edith Fanny Kirk
Born July 16, 1858 Sheffield, England. Died December 3, 1953 Lethbridge,
Alberta. Edith did not get along with her step mother and this allowed the
younger woman to follow training as an artist traveling and studying
through the United Kingdom and France before she immigrated to Vancouver,
British Columbia in 1905. Aside from her water colour landscape paintings
she also supported herself as nurse’s helper in a gold mining hospital, and
a teacher in ranching country. At the age of 60 she relocated to Lethbridge,
Alberta. Here she continued her art and joined the Alpine Club and the
Traveler’s Aid Society. She taught art classes at the local YMCA for a
few dollars a month and continued to sell her art. She was a member of the
Alberta Society of Artists and was paramount in the creation of the
Lethbridge Sketch Club in 1936. Her biography by Wendy Aitkens is called:
Adventure and art: The life of Edith Fanny Kirk.
Elsie Dorothy Knowles 50
Born April 7,1927. She is an artist
who enjoys water colour landscapes as her form of expression. She has
been able to have her works shown in Vancouver; Edmonton; London, England;
Paris, France, Chicago; Los Angeles and more recently in a 1994
traveling exhibition by the Mendel Art Gallery in Saskatoon.
Elizabeth Annie McGillivray Knowles
née Beach. Born January 8, 1866 Ottawa, Ontario. Died
October 4, 1928. A painted of considerable recognition she specialized in
nature studies. She was elected an associate of the Royal Academy of Art in
1908. Samples of her works are preserved in the National Gallery of Canada
and Parkwood Museum, the home of Canadian businessman Sam McLaughlin,(1871-1972), Oshawa.
Wanda Koop
Born October 5, 1951 Vancouver, British Columbia. Prior to
attending university she attended the Lemoine Fitzgerald School of Art. In
1973 she earned her BA from the University of Manitoba. While still a
university student in 1972 her works were displayed at the Winnipeg Art
Gallery where she would have in 1981 her 1st solo show. In 1998 she
founded Art City in Winnipeg to bring together contemporary visual artists
and inner city youth. In 2002 she received the Queen Elizabeth ll Golden
Jubilee Medal. Some of her art combines video, performance and photography.
Her paintings have been the subject of countless displays throughout North
America. In 2005 she was elected to the Royal Canadian Society of Arts and
in 2006 she became a Member of the Order of Canada. In 2007 she was the
subject of a Documentary Wanda Koop: In Her Eyes. In 2011 her works appeared
in a solo wxhibit at the National Gallery of Canada. In 2012 she received
the Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Medal.
Karen Gay Kulyk
Born July 19,
1920, Toronto, Ontario. She earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Your
University in 1973. After graduation she established and ran Seedlings, a
Toronto gallery for emerging artists while continuing her own studio work.
In 1975 she joined the Marianne Friedland Gallery and began exhibiting her
won works around the world in the Mediterranean, Caribbean, Asia,
Scandinavia, East and West Europe as well as North and South America. In
1983 she was awarded the Grollo d’Oro for her unique use of colour at the
Treviso International Art Competition and the Sheila-Hugh Mackay Foundation
Grant in 1997. She has been Artist in residence at universities and museums
around the world and was the 1st Canadian invited to exhibit solo at the
National Gallery of Thailand. Source: The Canadian Who’s who, (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1997)
Cathy Lacey
Born December 1956 Spiritwood, Saskatchewan. She originally
attended the University of Saskatchewan for the B.A. in 1979. She returned
in 2004 to the university where she received her Bachelor of Fine Arts “with
Great Distinction”. She received the University Medal for Fine Arts and the
Judith Poole Award. After dedicating one of her works to a child who was
murdered in her home province she has dedicated her energies and talents and
works of art to raise monies and awareness of community groups such as
Saskatchewan food banks, Community Health Education Programs, Planned
Parenthood and internationally Women 4 Women Afghanistan. She also has
created art to depict the contributions and support to society of the
grandmothers and women from our heritage. Source: Saskatoon Women’s Calendar Collective. Herstory 2007: the
Canadian Women’s Calendar (Regina: Couteau Books, 2006) pg. 42
Anne Langton
Born June 24, 1804, Yorkshire Dales, England. Died May 10, 1893, Toronto,
Canada. Anne was educated at home as was the habit of wealthy families at
the time. As a teen she traveled about Europe as a finale to her education.
A reverse in finances found the family living a more modest live in smaller
accommodations and with fewer servants. Anne was however able to continue
learning sketching and painting which she loved and with which she showed
some talent. In 1834, Anne, her parents and an unmarried Aunt moved to the
backwoods of Fenelon Falls Upper Canada to support a son, John, who had
taken up farming in Canada. Anne wrote letter home to another brother in
England and also kept a diary of family activities and living conditions in
1830’s and 1840’s. Family letters home and Anne’s diary entries were
published as the book A Gentlewomen in Upper Canada in 1966. Anne’s
brother John, as he prospered, became interested in politics and was elected
to parliament in the colony. John moved his family with him as the Canadian
Capital moved from place to place. Anne continued sketching and drawing and
her works have provided historical insight to the Canadian backwoods, early
Toronto, Quebec City and Ottawa as the family settled in each town. Her
artistic works are located in the National Archives of Canada.
A public School in Fenelon Fall, Ontario is named in her honor.
Rita Letendre
Born November 1, 1928 Drummondville, Quebec. As
a child Rita lived with her maternal grandmother in Saint-Francois-du-lac.
In 1935 she moved with her family to Saint-Majorique-de-Grantham. but life
was difficult with she and her siblings experiencing prejudices because of
their Abenaki First Nations Heritage. She preferred solitude and loved to
draw. When the family relocated to Montreal she was required to take care of
her siblings while her parents worked. In 1946 she worked at a factory and a
restaurant cashier to earn money to leave home to live with her boyfriend.
The couple had one son who would be raised by his maternal grandmother. At
19 she enrolled in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. By 1951 she was embracing
abstract art and exhibited her works with the famed group called Les
Automatists.
Originally this painter and printmaker was interested in
simple shapes but as she matured her work became more austere, with large
geometric forms.She is known for large interior and exterior murals. In 2002 she
became an Officer of the l'Ordre National du Québec. In 2005 she was
inducted into the Order of Canada. In 2010 she won the Governor General's
Award and in 2012 she received the Queen Elizabeth ll Diamond Jubilee Medal.
In 2016 she became a member of the Order of Ontario.
Marion Long
Born 1882 Toronto, Ontario. Died August
17, 1970. She studied art at the Ontario College of Art and in New York
City. She gained a good reputation as a portrait artist and in 1913 opened
her own studio in Toronto. In 1922 she became an associate of the Royal
Canadian Academy and a fully elected member in 1933. She also became well
known for her paintings of Toronto city life. Her works are owned y the Art
Gallery of Ontario and the National Gallery of Canada.
Mary Love
Baptized June 25, 1806 Halifax, Nova Scotia. Died January 13, 1866.
She was educated in England and continued her studies in art. She began
drawing in the 1820’s She married Lieutenant Colonel James Frederick Love
July 16, 1825 while he was stationed in New Brunswick. It was after her
marriage that her interest in art deepened. In 1826 her works were
reproduced by lithographs in the U.S.A. She is considered the first Canadian
born artist to have works lithographed. (drawn on stone for printing and
reproduction) Her husband was posted to Great Britain and the
Mediterranean before returning to settle with his wife in Lower Canada. In
1856 Mary joined her husband in England where he was Knighted for his
military career achievements in 1856,and she became Lady Love.
Suggested source: The Dictionary of Canadian Biography (Toronto:
The University of Toronto Press) Vol. lX..
Laura Lyall
née Muntz. Born June 18,1860 Radford
England. Died December 9,1930. As a child she immigrated to Ontario with her
family in 1869 and as a young woman she became a school teacher but soon was
studying art in Paris where she was exposed to the impressionist style. She
was one of the first Canadian artists to receive recognition abroad and the
first woman asked to exhibit with the Canadian Art club. Portraits of
children were a special pleasure for her. Since women could not become
elected members to the Royal Canadian Academy she became an associate in the
academy in 1895 At the age of 55, she gave up her art to raise the family of
eleven children of her deceased sister. She returned to painting only at 64.
Sarah Mary Blake Lynch-Staunton
née
Blake. Born 1864? Galway, Ireland. Died 1933, Pintcher Creek, Alberta. Sara
attended St Leonard’s-on-the-Sea, England and later she lived in France with
her mother and sisters where she may have obtained addition training in art.
In 1890 Sarah married Alfred Hardwick Lynch-Staunton (1860-1932) a member of
the Northwest Mounted Police and later a rancher at Deer Horn Ranch, North
Fork, Alberta. Sarah had immigrated in 1887 to see her brothers ranch. The
couple had 8 children, 3 of whom died early. Sara painted landscapes and
small sketches. She decorated her home by painting doors with local outdoor
scenes. Her watercolour ‘Deer Horn Ranch’ is part of the Collections of the
Glenbow Museum, Alberta.
Source: Canadian Women Artists History Initiative, 2007 Concordia
University.
Margaret Kathleen
'Pegi' Nicol MacLeod
née Nicol. Born January 4, 1904
Listowel, Ontario. Died February 12, 1949. A painter she was among the
first wave of artists of Canadian modernism. She painted many works of
the women’s division of the Armed Forces at the end of World War ll.
She left over 1000 works of art in many media including designs for hooked
rugs.
Doris Jean McCarthy
Born
July 7, 1910, Calgary, Alberta. Died November 25, 2010 Toronto, Ontario.
Her talent was noted early and she began taking art classes at 15. In 1926
noted artist Arthur Lismer gave her a scholarship to the Ontario Collage of
Art where she was coached by several members of the famous Canadian painters
known as the Group of Seven. She began teaching and providing encouragement
to others. She taught high school students of her avocation for 40 years
retiring only in 1972. She shared her joie de vivre though her paintings of
landscapes she viewed around the world. She is considered perhaps Canada’s
best landscape artist. She was the 1st woman to be president of the Ontario
Society of artists. In 1983 she was named Canadian Woman Artist of the year.
At the age of 79 she graduated from the University of Toronto with a B.A. in
English. She named her home “Fools Paradise” and bequeathed it to the
Ontario Heritage Foundation to be sued as a retreat for artists. Her
landscapes for which she is best known have been exhibited around the world
and some of her works are owned by the National Gallery of Canada. In
2004 the Doris McCarthy Gallery opened on the Scarborough Campus of the
University of Toronto. She authored a 3 volume set of her autobiography. She
was a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, recipient of the Order
of Ontario and the Order of Canada.Source:
Herstory: The Canadian Women's calendar. 2008 (Saskatoon Women's
Calendar Collective / Coteau Books, 2007) : Obituary,
The Toronto Star,
November 2010 Online accessed November 2013
Isabel Grace McLaughlin
Born October 10, 1903 Oshawa, Ontario.
Died November
26,
2002 Toronto, Ontario. Isabel was one of five daughters born to the family
of Robert Samuel McLaughlin (1871-1972). Her father was the founder of
McLaughlin Motor Car Company which became General Motors Canada. Isabel
studied art at the Ontario College of Art, Toronto, Ontario graduating in
1930. In her last years at the OCA she also took time to study in Paris,
France and Vienna, Austria. An important early modernist painter in
Canada she used bright colours in her highly subjective paintings. In
1933 she was a founding member of the of the Canadian Group of Painters
where she served as the 1st woman president in 1939. She donated many
of her works as well as works from other artists to the Robert McLaughlin
Gallery. In 1993 she was inducted into the Order of Ontario and in 1997 the
Order of Canada. Her papers are in the Queen's University Archives,
Kingston, Ontario.
(2019)
Helen Galloway McNicoll
Born December 14, 1879 Toronto, Ontario. Died June 27, 1915
Swanage, England. Helen suffered scarlet fever as a child and as a result
became deaf. Helen was also suffer from diabetes. The family relocated to
Montreal when her father obtained work there. She studied art at the Art
Association of Montreal. From 1904 for two years she studied at the Slade
School of Fine art in London, England and then set up a studio in France. In
1908 she earned the Jessie Dow Prize for painting from the Art Association
of Montreal. Back in England she share a studio with a artist friend where
she was elected to the Royal Society of Art in 1913. The following year she
was elected as an associate member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.
Showings of her work were held posthumously in 1922 and 1925 by the Art
Association of Montreal. In 1970 the Granite Club of Toronto arranged an
exhibition and in 1974 the Jerrold Morris Gallery in Toronto . held an
exhibition of her works. Her works are to be found in the collections of the
National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Hamilton and the Art
Galleries of Nora Scotia and Ontario as well as the Montreal Museum of Fine
Art. (2019)
Marie Madeleine
Maufils dit de St Louis.
Baptized December 21, 1671. She was one of the religious
Hospitallers at the Hôtel-Dieu. She was known as Mother Maufils. She was a
talented painter and artist who is credited with some of the artistic panels
in the Chapel of the Hôpital Générale in Quebec city.
Agnes Martin
Born 1912 Macklin, Saskatchewan. Died December 16, 2004.
She grew up in Vancouver, then moved to Bellingham, Washington, in 1932. She
earned a BA in 1942 and an MA in 1952 from the Teachers College at
Columbia University, New York. She relocated to Coenties Slip in Lower
Manhattan, and had her first one-person exhibition in 1958 at the
Betty Parsons Gallery, New York City. Surveys of her work have been
presented at venues including the Institute of Contemporary Art at the
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (1973), the Stedelijk Museum,
Amsterdam (1991), the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1992), and
the Menil Collection, Houston (2002). Martin continued to live and work in
Taos, New Mexico, until her death. Some critics have labeled her one of the
world's foremost abstract painters.
Mimi Matte
Birth name Madeleine R Packham.
Born Regina, Saskatchewan. September 10, 1929. She married in
1952 a little less than a year after she had received her Bachelor of Fine
Arts from McGill University in Montreal. James and Mimi would have two
daughters. A commercial artist she began exhibiting her works only in 1974.
She has had group and solo showing across North America. Several renowned
collections house her works including : Imperial Oil: Shell Oil: Marcil
Trust: and Westin Hotels. The incentive for her works comes from anywhere,
even an over heard snippet of conversations. She applies bright colours and
provides a distinctive presentation of her ideas and subjects.
Source: Canadian who’s who (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
2005)
Maria Frances Ann Morris Miller
née Morris.
Born February 12, 1813 Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Died
October 28, 1875 Halifax, Nova Scotia. Maria received training in
art from an American artist and and English artist who were providing
art lessons in Halifax. A woman of talent and determination she used her
artistic abilities to open schools in Halifax to teach the young refined
women the fine art of drawing. Combining her interest in flora and fauna
with her drawing she published 146 paintings of Nova Scotia wildflowers
in 1840. Wild Flowers of North America
was published in 1867. Her works were widely accepted with and exposition
at the 1867 Paris exhibition. She is
considered the f1t professional woman artist in Nova Scotia.July 7, 1840 she married Garret Trafalgar Nelson Miller and
the couple had several children. In 1856 she and her sister Catherine
published a volume of poetry. She was able to have financial earnings to
support herself and to gain recognition of her work at a time when women
were just beginning to come forward as accomplished individuals and not
just daughters and wives!! (2019) tionary of Canadian Biography Vol. X Online : Marie Morris Miller.
National Gallery of Canada. Online (Accessed January 2014)
Kathleen Jean Munn
Born 1887
Toronto, Ontario.. Died October 1974. Her mother managed the family of six
and the family jewelry business after the death of her husband in 1890. Her
grandmother was an accomplished amateur painter and encouraged young
Kathleen’s drawing and she was sent to study at the Westbourne School with
F. McGillivray Knowles from 1904 to 1907 where Kathleen thrived. In 1909
she began to exhibit Barbizon-inspired landscapes at the Ontario Society of
Art (OSA) and the Canadian National Exhibition (CNE). In 1912 she was in New
York City to study at eh Art Students League and in 1914 she was awarded
first prize at the Summer School in Woodstock New York, U.S.A. She
toured Britain and the major art centres of continental Europe with her
sister in 1920. In the 1920’s she established her studio in the family home
in Toronto and she began to work on a series of paintings that explored
Christian themes. She devoted the 1930’s to the subject of the Passion. She
exhibited a number of these drawings at the Malloney Galleries in Toronto in
1935. Discouraged by the lack of response to her works and facing the death
of a brother and living with a disabled sister she stopped producing her
work about 1939. Most of her work remained in family hands. The Art Gallery
of Toronto exhibited her Passion drawings in several group shows in the
1940’s and the Willistead Art Gallery in Windsor included her Ascension in a
1954 show of drawings.
Agnes Nanogak
Born November 12, 1925 Baillie Island Northwest Territories. (married
name Agnes Nanogak Goose) Died May 5, 2001 Ulukhaktok,
Northwest Territories. In 1943 Nanogak married Wallace Goose and the
couple had seven children. This Inuit artist is known for her energetic and
colourful representations of native myths and legends. Her early drawings
were done using graphite pencils but she soon opted to use colourful
felt-tip pens. Many of her works on themes of Inuit life were later produced
as prints. Nanogak contributed to every print collection by the Homan
artists' co-operative beginning in 1967.
In 1985 she was the 1st Inuit artist to receive an honorary degree from a
university in Canada. In 2002 the Winnipeg Art Gallery held a
solo exhibition of her works. You can see her
work in the book she illustrated Tales From the Igloo, a book of
Inuit stories., published in 1972 and More Tales From the Igloo
published in 1986. Her artwork is found in collections of some 15
institutions across Canada and the United States.
Lilias Torrance Newton
Born 1896,
Lachine, Quebec. Died 1980, Cowansville, Quebec. At the arge of 12 Lilias
began taking lessons at the Art Association of Montreal. During World War l
she went to England with her mother and became a Red Cross nurse. She also
studied art in London. Returning to Canada she shared an art studio with
colleagues who would become known as the Beaver Hall Group. In 1921 she
married Frederick Newton who would later abandon her. In 1923 she was
elected as the youngest member to the Royal Canadian Academy and the same
year she received honorable mention at an art show in Paris, France. She
would continue her work after her divorce in order to support herself and
her son. In 1934 her nude painting caused uproar at the Art Gallery in
Toronto. During WW ll she was hired to paint portraits of military officers
and illustrated recruiting posters. Portraits became her preferred genre and
in 1957 she was the 1st Canadian to produce an official portrait of Queen
Elizabeth and H.R.H. Prince Philip for Government House in Ottawa. She would
paint until 1975 when she suffered from a serious fall.
Source: Herstory 2008: A Canadian Woman’s Calendar
(Coteau Books, 2007) ; National Gallery of Canada Online (Accessed February
2014)
Maxine Noel
Aboriginal Artist
Born 1946, Birdtail Reserve, Manitoba. Maxine's Sioux name is
loyan Mani meaning to 'walk beyond'. Maxine is a survivor of an Indian
residential school. Maxine began her
working
career in 1964 as a legal secretary in Edmonton, Alberta and
Toronto, Ontario. For a time she ran the Ininew Native Friendship Centre in
Cochrane, Ontario which been established as a safe place for Aboriginal
peoples but sadly had become more of a crisis intervention centre. This
experience moved Maxine on a path towards community engagement and healing.
She soon took a position with the Ontario
Native Council On Justice working on the needs of Aboriginal inmates in and
out of Ontario prisons and jails in Guelph, Ontario. She had always enjoyed
drawing as a youth and she developed and refined her skills during these
early working years. In 1979 she became a full-time artist. March 1980 she
had her 1st solo exhibition in Toronto and has since had showings across the
country. She works with various techniques such as serigraphy, a printing
technique whereby a mesh is used to transfer ink onto
a substrate, except in areas made impermeable to the ink by a blocking
stencil.
She also works with etching, lithography and cast paper. he is is also
involved with
Native Earth
Performing Arts, the
Canadian Native Arts Foundation and the Association for Native Development
in the Performing and Visual Arts. She has lectured at various institutions
of higher learning including the Ontario College of Art, the Saskatchewan
School of Fine Arts and the University of Western Ontario in London,
Ontario. In 2019 she was inducted into the Order of Canada. (2019)
Daphne Odjig
Aboriginal Artist
Born
September 11, 1919, Wikwemikong, Manitoulin Island, Ontario. Died October 1,
2016, Kelowna, British Columbia. This artist draws on her Potawatomi native
heritage for her inner artistic strength and credits her grandfather Jonas
for nurturing her spirit as a child. Daphne moved to Ottawa for formal art
training and continued her education in Sweden. During World War II, she
relocated to Toronto for work and there she met her first husband, Paul
Somerville (d 1962) . Paul was moved to the West Coast for military duty and
this is where Daphne raised their two sons. It was only once her sons where
in school that Daphne found time to devote to painting. In the 1960’s her
sister encouraged her to paint scenes from Manitoulin Island mythology and
Daphne produced several children’s books based on Ojibwa culture. IN 1962
she married Chester Beavon and the couple settled in northern Manitoba. In
1972 exhibited her works in Winnipeg, the 1st time that Native artists were
featured in an Art Gallery. Her own works have been exhibited in Europe,
Israel and Japan. She painted a large mural at the national Arts
Center in Ottawa. In 1973 she was a founding member of the Professional
Native Indian Artists Association. In 1987 she was made a Member of the
Order of Canada and two years later she was elected to the Royal Academy of
Art. In 1992 she received the Commemorative Medal for the 125th Anniversary
of Confederation. In 1998 she won a National Aboriginal Achievement Award.
She has also published her memoirs “Paintbrush in My Hand” (1993) One
of her paintings was used for Canada's Christmas stamp in 2002. In 2007 she
received the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts and was made
a Member of the Order of British Columbia. In February 2011 Canada
Post again chose some of her art works to appear on Canadian Stamps. Sources: The
Canadian Encyclopedia Online. Accessed 2002) Updated 2015. Daphne
Odjig: The Art History Archive. Online (Accessed October 2015)
Marie 'Mimi' Parent
Born September 8, 1924 Montreal, Quebec.
When she was at art school in Montreal she was considered undisciplined and
was expelled in 1947. That same year she held her first solo exhibition in
Montreal. In 1948 she married fellow art student Jean Benoit and moved
permanently to Paris. She has participated in many European and North
American exhibitions of her surrealist work both with colleagues and solo
exhibits. She is considered on the the most original Canadian artists in the
20th Century.
Myfanwy Pavelic
Portrait artist
née Spencer. Born April 27, 1916 Victoria
British Columbia. Died May 7, 2007. She was introduced to painting by Emily
Carr on Vancouver Island. She was brought up in a well to do family and the
family home was eventually donated to the City of Victoria to become an art
gallery. She studied for a few months with a Yugoslav artist but other than
these brief instructions she is basically self taught as an artist. During
World Was ll she donated proceeds from a solo exhibition to the Red Cross.
She married and had one daughter. In 1997 she was a founding member of the
Canadian Portrait Academy. In 1990 her portrait of former Prime Minister
Pierre Elliott Trudeau won the F. H. Varley Medallion for Best Portrait
Painting. Her portraits have been displayed and donated to
the National Portrait Gallery
London, England where she is the 1st known
Canadian born artist to be represented in the permanent collections. In 1984 she was inducted as
a Member of the Order of Canada. In 2001 she became a Member of the Order of
British Columbia. She was also a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of
Arts. (2019)
Pitseolak
Inuit artist
Pitseolak Ashoona. Born circa
1904, Nottingham Island, Northwest Territories. Died May 28, 1983. She was
brought up in a traditional Inuit lifestyle, traveling from camp to camp
with her people. In 1922 she married and with her husband she would have 17
children. Sadly only 6 of her children would live to adulthood. After the
death of her husband life became in difficult. A local civil administrator
encouraged the widow to carve, sew and draw scenes from her memories of the
traditional way of life. Her clothing, with telling scenes, sold and she
began to work with pen, and coloured pencils. At her home in Cape Dorset she
produced drawings of monsters and spirits of Inuit tales, scenes of early
Inuit life and other memories from her heart. These works are now located in
galleries and private collections around the world. As well as leaving her
own personal works, three of her sons became gifted stone carvers and a
daughter, Napadive Poottoogook, a graphic artist. In 1971 she told her story
in the book : Pitseolak : Pictures out of my life. The National Film
Board of Canada turned the illustrations from the book into an animated
film. Pitseolak was a member of the Royal Academy of the Arts and in 1977
she received the Order of Canada. Canada Post issued a stamp in her honour
March 8, 1993.
Jane Ash Poitras
Born 1951 Fort Chipewyan. After the death of her mother she was
adopted as a orphaned toddler by Marguerite Runck a German-Canadian widow.
Her life quickly adapted to a Canadian mainstream way of life. She began
studding sciences but soon switched to her primary love of art. She earned
Bachelor of Fine arts in print making at the University of Alberta. After
the breakup of her marriage she followed up with a BFA at Yale and a
MFA at Columbia University in New Your City. As a teen she had begun the
reconnection to her Native roots and as an adult artist she found her
ancestry a strong influence in her work. Her paintings show a merging of
European and North American Native cultures. She is also a well known
wordsmith and welcomed public speaker. Her works have been shown
across North America and are part of the holdings of such institutions as
the Royal Ontario Museum and the National Gallery of Canada. Her works and
biography have been published in Cultural memories and imagined futures:
The art of Jane Ash Poitras by Pam McCallum (2011). In 2011 she was the
co-recipient of the Lieutenants Governor of Alberta award for Distinguished
Artists. Her life partner is Clint Buehler. The couple have two sons.
Sources:
Honor Song: A tribute by Barbara Hagan Vancouver: Raincoast Books, 1996.
Annie Pootoogook
Inuit Artist
Born May 11,
1969, Cape Dorset, Baffin Island. Died September 19, 2016. Ottawa, Ontario
She began drawing in 1997 with the encouragement of the West Baffin Eskimo
Cooperative. Her pencil works reflect her own personal experiences of
everyday life. She has produced images of prefabricated housing and video
games and television sets. She has also tackled mental illness, alcoholism
and domestic abuse. She has produced works for group shows and solo
exhibitions across Canada. In 2006 she won the Sobey Art Award the
pre-eminent prize for Canadian artists under 40 years of age. After winning
this award she had numerous solo exhibitions and group exhibitions of her
work throughout North America. She was accepted into the Artists at
Glenfiddich residency program in Scotland. In 2007 she became the 1st Inuit
artist invited to participate in the International art exhibition in Kassel,
Germany. While drawing provides living wage, Annie also likes to draw
because it gives her a lift in life. Source: Herstory; The Canadian
Women’s Calendar 2010; Robert Everett-Green and Gloria Galloway, A
remarkable life; Annie Pootoogook’s detailed, colourful work helped lead to
a profound shift in what Inuit art should look like. In the Globe and
Mail October 2016.
Annie Louisa Prat
Born 1861.
Died 1960, Nova Scotia. In 1877 through 1879 she lived with relatives in
Halifax, Nova Scotia. She earned honorable mention for her watercolour
painting in the 1879 Provincial Exhibition. In the 188’s she served as
secretary to Charles C.D. Roberts
(1860-1943 ), the man who
would become known as the Father of Canadian poetry. In 1896 she was
painting miniature portraits for friends and she enrolled in the Chicago Art
Institute. She moved to New York for a short time to help with her sisters’
book binding business before returning to Nova Scotia by 1900. From
1917-1920 she was Dean of Women at King’s College. In 1926 she lost sight in
one eye in an accident and gave up miniature painting but she continued her
war with painting wildflowers. These works proved to be an historical record
of native plants of the province.
Source:
Herstory: Canadian Women’s Calendar 2012 ,Coteau Books, 2011.
Mary Frances
Pratt
née West. Born March 15, 1935 Fredericton, New Brunswick. Died
August 14, 2018 St John's Newfoundland. Mary studied Fine Arts at Mount
Allison University It was while at university she met Christopher
Pratt. The couple married September 12, 1957 and relocated to Scotland were
their first two children were born. Upon returning to Newfoundland Mary
completed her Fine Arts Degree and two more children rounded out the family.
This artist is perhaps best described as a photo realist. Her paintings of
common household items look so real, you might think that there were a
photograph! Many of the subjects of her works are thins found in the kitchen
of her home, like the work entitled ”Christmas Turkey” (1980). Her
works have been exhibited since 1967 in major Canadian galleries and form
part of the collections of the National Gallery of Canada, the Rooms, the
Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, the New Brunswick Museum, Beaverbrook Art
Gallery, Vancouver Art Gallery, the Art Gallery of Ontario and Canada House,
London England. Her works have often toured including the 2013-2015
solo exhibition simply entitled Mary Pratt. Mary has served her community by
holding positions on the Government Task Force on Education in 1973
Newfoundland, the Federal cultural Policy Review Committee. She chaired the
Sir Wilfred Grenfel College, Corner Brook, Newfoundland Committee to advise
the creation of the School of Fine Arts. She has also held position on the
Canada Council 1987-1993 and being a member of the Board of Regents of Mount
Allison University 1983-1991. In 1996 Mary was inducted a Companion of the
Order of Canada. Sadly she and her husband Christopher separated in 2004. In
2007 Canada Post honored Mary with a series of postage stamps. In 2013 she
became a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.
Lucy Qinnuayuak
Born 1915? Sugluk, Quebec. Died September 10, 1982 Cape Dorset, North West
Territories. Lucy began to draw in the 1950’s just when Inuit printmaking
was beginning to take shape in Cape Dorset. Lucy is best known for her
fanciful Arctic birds. Over 100 of her original works became prints.
Source: Canadian Encyclopedia online Accessed 2017.
Hilary Celia Radcliffe Kilbourn
Born 1953? Toronto, Ontario. Died February 2, 2006 Toronto, Ontario. Hilary
always loved to draw even as a child. After a religious retreat in Scotland
she became ill and was hospitalized to be diagnosed with bipolar disorder
with which she would struggle for the rest of her life. Eventually she would
settle in one of the original older homes on Toronto Island. She often
opened her home to others needing a place to live. In 1994 she created an
half hour film about life on Toronto Island which was aired on cable TV. On
the Toronto Island she applied her art which she often would give away. She
enjoyed painting views of the Toronto Island. Her sister felt that one
of her best works was a larger-than-life portrait of their father looking
like the Toronto rebel leader of 1837, William Lyon Mackenzie King.
(2018)
Mary Augusta Hiester Reid
née Hiester. Born April 10, 1854 Reading, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.
Died October 4, 1921 Toronto, Ontario. While studying art at the
Pennsylvania Academy of Art in the
USA she met her future husband,
Canadian artist George Agnew Reid (1860-1947). There was time to study
in Paris before the Reid family settled in Toronto, Ontario. She was an
elected member of the Ontario Society of Artists, an associate of the
Royal Canadian Academy (women were not allowed to be elected to the
Academy) in 1896. She would become 1st
woman to serve on the executive council of the Ontario Society of
Artists. Her art legacy includes interiors and murals as
well as her landscape paintings. Largely forgotten today, her still life
and floral paintings were shining examples of art that was considered
acceptable for women of the Victorian era. When she died, the Art
Gallery of Toronto launched the largest single retrospective show in its
history, in 1922. It was a
memoriam featuring her works she became the
1st Canadian woman to have a solo exhibition of her works.
In 2000-2001 a successful showing of her works was called Quiet Harmony.
(2019)
Sarah Margaret Armor Robertson
Born June 16, 1891, Montreal, Quebec. Died December 6, 1948, Montreal,
Quebec. From 1909 through 1924 she studied at the Art Association of
Montreal. It was during this time that she became part of the Modernist
movement in Canada. She joined the Beaver Hall Group of painters in 1922 in
time for their 2nd showing. Most of the members of the Hall shared studio
space and were rejected by the mainstream galleries. The women of Beaver
Hall continued after the main group had disbanded in 1923. In 1924-1925 she
was showing her paintings in Great Britain to positive reviews. After her
father’s death in 1926 she painted so that she could pay her living with her
mother. In 1928 on of her paintings, The Blue Sleigh appeared in a Group of
Seven Art Show.
(2020)
Amelia Mildred Ross
née Peel. Born 1856? Canada West (now Ontario) Died February 29, 1920
Santa Barbara, California, U.S.A. Mildred would study art at the
Pennsylvania Academy of
Fine Arts in the U.S.A. prior to studying in Paris France. She enjoyed
painting as well as sculpting. She would
become the 1st woman in Canada to complete publicly commissioned
sculpture works.
She married Lawyer and future Ontario Premier George W. Ross
on May 8, 1907. She remembered best for her but of Laura Secord, the
heroine of the War of 1812 which is part
of the monument in Drummond Hill Cemetery, Niagara Falls, Ontario.
She is also know for her portrait of Laura Secord which hangs in the
Ontario Legislature. There is somewhat of a scandal that surrounded this
portrait that was completed in 1905 as a commissioned work for the
Ontario Legislature. An X-ray done in the 1970's revealed that
under the portrait was another image, the image of her husband, Sir
George W. Ross whiskers and all. In 2014 there was a showing of Peel
family art in London Ontario and it was discovered that the Laura Secord
portrait looked very much like a portrait of Mildred's mother, Margaret
Amelia Peel! The Laura Secord portrait languished in storage for many
years but was finally hung once again in the Ontario Provincial
legislature building in Toronto.
(2020)
Susan Ross
née Ruttan. Born June 3, 1915 Port Arthur (now Thunder Bay) Ontario. Died
January 5, 2006. As a child Susan's mother encouraged her daughter to
take art lessons. In high school she began studying anatomy. Her uncle,
filmmaker Robert Flaherty (1884-1951), became her mentor and paid her
fees to attend the Ontario College of Art in Toronto from 1933
to 1938. In her last year she left school to marry lawyer Jim Ross. The
couple would have four children. The family settled in Port Arthur and
Susan worked to have her art taken seriously. She signed her works as S.
A. Ross or SARoss to hide the fact of being a woman. She was
active in the Port Arthur Art Club and participated in local art
exhibitions. In the early 1950's she taught art at Hillcrest High
School. Her use of tissue and glue and mixing layers of watercolour
between layers in etchings helped introduce modernism to Canadian art.
She painted portraits of friends and neighbours and First Nations
peoples. She travelled with author Sheila Burnford (1918-1984) across
the Canadian North even to Pond Inlet on Baffin Island in 1970-1971.
Susan would return to Baffin Island on following trips into the 1980's.
Susan would provide illustrations for some of Sheila's books as well as
other Canadian authors. She produced covers of the Canadian magazine The
Beaver. Susan stopped painted when she was 85 declaring that she no
longer had the urge to point.
(2020)
Etching of Fisherman in Northwest Territories 1982-83.
Anne Douglas Savage
Born July 27, 1896, Montreal,
Quebec. Died March 25, 1971, Montreal, Quebec. Growing up with summers in the
Laurentian mountains Anne learned to lover her surroundings. She studied art
at the Art association of Montreal between 1914 and 1918 During World War l.
her twin brother was killed. After the war Anne studied design at the
Minneapolis School of Art in Minnesota, U.S.A. Returning home to Montreal
she began teaching art at Baron Byng High School from 1922 through 1947.
She was a pioneer in teaching children’s art. Her own works matured showed a
lyrical quality and later in life she was attracted to the abstract form of
painting. In 1921 she joined the Beaver Hall Hill Group of painters.. After
spending some time at the Ontario College of Art, Toronto with some members
of the famous Group of Sever she traveled to Europe and British Columbia. In
1933 she was a founding member of the Canadian Group of Painters where she
served in 1949 and again in 1960 as president. In 1948 she became supervisor
of art for the Protestant School Board of Montreal. She encouraged the
founding of the High School Art Teaching Association and in 1955 she
she inspired the formation of the Child Art Council, now the Quebec Society
for Education Through Art. Retiring from full time teaching art in 1953 she
taught at the McGill University from 1954-1959. Her archives are stored at
Concordia University, Montreal. (2020)
Charlotte Mount Brock Schreiber
née Morrell. Born
May 21, 1834, Woodham, Mortimer, United Kingdom. Died July 3,192,2
Paignton, United Kingdom. Charlotte was trained in art at Mr. Carey's
School of Art, London, England. She also studied anatomy to gain a
better understanding of the human body. When she was just 21 some of her
works were exhibited at the Royal Academy. She also earned a reputation
for illustrations she made for various books. In 1875 she married
Weymouth Schreiber and became step-mother to three children. The
family immigrated to Canada and settled in Toronto, Ontario. In 1875 she
was elected to the Ontario Society of Artists and the next year,
1876, she became the 1st woman to teach at the Ontario School of art .A
painter of the Victorian sentimental era she painted landscapes and
figures.
In 1880 she became the 1st woman appointed to the
Royal Canadian Academy (RCA). Charlotte resigned in 1888
from the Royal Canadian Academy over the refusal to have women attend
meetings.She exhibited with the Ontario Society
of Art from 1876 to 1890 and with the Toronto Industrial Exhibition, the
Art Association of Montreal, and the RCA. She was a founding
member of the Women's Art Association of Canada. In 1884 the family
settled on a farm on the Credit River near Toronto and Charlotte set up
a home studio where she gave lessons to many prominent young Canadian
artists.
One of the 1st women book
illustrators in Canada, three children’s books were published in
Toronto. After the death of
her husband she returned to England in 1890. (2020)
Ethel Seath
Born February 5, 1879, Montreal, Quebec. Died April 10, 1963.
Family pressures saw Ethel began working right after high school She worked
for 20 years as a commercial illustrator for various newspapers in Montreal.
Her work allowed her the financial support that allowed her to take classes
at the Art Association of Montreal and she also could take sketching trips in
the countryside. She began teaching art at The Study and would help
students for forty five years. She was a founding member of the Beaver Hall
Group and a member of the Canadian Group of Painters. She exhibited her art
in exhibitions in Canada, the eastern United States. and took part in the
British Empire Exhibition, London, England in 1924 and 1925. In 1939 her
works were shown at the New York World's Fair. Later in life she often held
exhibits of her work in her home. She retired from her teaching duties
at The Study when she was 83. Her works are to be found in the National
Gallery of Canada and other institutions.
(2020)
Elizabeth Posthuma Simcoe
Artist & diarist
née Gwillim. Born September22, 1762, Whitchurch, England.
Died January 17, 1850, Honiton, England. Elizabeth's middle name earned her
middle name, Posthuma, because she was born after the death of her father
Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Gwillim. Her mother Elizabeth died on the day of
Baptism. She grew up at the estate of her stepfather Admiral Samuel Graves.
December 30, 1782 she married John Graves Simcoe (1752-1806)
and Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada 1791-1796.
The couple had seven children which included two born in Upper Canada.
Elizabeth and a daughter, Sophia left England with her husband for
Canada on September 12, 1791 and arrived on November 11, 1791. Elizabeth
kept a diary of her life in Upper Canada which gives insight to life in
early Upper Canada. The diary was published in 1934. She also did
watercolour paintings of local scenery in Upper Canada leaving a legacy of
images of her era in Upper Canada. She was responsible for naming the area
of Scarborough after the British local and East and West Gwillimbury, south
of Lake Simcoe are named for her family. The Township of Whitchurch is named
for her birthplace. In 2007 a statue of Elizabeth was dedicated in the town
of Bradford West Gwillimbury to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the
town. An Ontario Historic was dedicated to Mrs. Simcoe at Holy Trinity
Church, Dunkeswell Abbey, Devon, England. (2020)
Tobie Thelma Steinhouse
née Davis. Born April 1, 1925, Montreal, Quebec. She studied in New York,
U.S.A. before 1948 to 1957 when she lived in Paris France where she
continued studies in graphics and painting. Just prior to leaving Paris she
held a solo exhibition of her works. Returning to Montreal she was a
founding member in 1965 at Altelier Libre de Recherches Graphics. She
became a member of the Canadian Group of Painters and was its last president
before it dissolved. In 1967 she was awarded the Jessie Dow Prize for her
painting.
Tobie also has an interest in Japanese calligraphy and exhibits with the
school of Suiha Hiroko Okata in Quebec. Her works form part of the
collections of the National Gallery of Canada and the Museum of Fine Arts,
Montreal. In 1972 she published
Songes et lumière huit eaux-fortes de Tobie Steinhouse [portfolio].
Montreal: La Guilde Graphique. Posted May 2016.
Dorothy Stevens
Born
September 2, 1888,Toronto, Ontario. Died June 5, 1966, Toronto,
Ontario. This portrait and figure painter studied in London, England in 1904
and Paris, France at the Académie Colarossi and the Académie de la grand
Chaumére.
Dorothy returned to Canada in 1911 to
begin her art career. She joined the Chicago Society of Etchers.
Her early works were etchings and later she was known for her oils and
pastel portraits of women in Toronto, Mexico, and the West Indies. She
is also known for prints of factory workers during World War l 1914-1918.
The prints were sold to raise money for the war effort. She taught
children’s art classes for 15 years in Toronto but, may have been better
remembered as throwing the best parties in the city of Toronto! During
world War ll 1939-1945 she arranged dances for soldiers to raise money
for the war effort. In 1949 she was elected as a member of the Royal
Canadian Academy of Arts. Dorothy had shows of her works throughout North
America, the United Kingdom and Paris France. Some of her works are held at
the Art Gallery of Alberta, the Art Gallery of Ontario and the National
Gallery of Canada.
(2020)
Françoise Sullivan-Ewen
née Sullivan.
Born June 10, 1925 Montreal, Quebec As a youth she studied classical
dance but also enjoyed classes in visual arts. In 1940 she attended the
Ecole des beaux-arts de Montreal. This artist was part of the famous
Automatists group of Montreal. As well as her art, she pursued a
career in dance after studying in New York City. In 1949 she married
artist Paterson Ewen (1925-2002) .After her marriage in 1949 she started a
family and found it more difficult to keep up her successful dance career.
She turned her artistic talents to welded metal sculptures. She
created a monumental sculpture for Expo 67 in Montreal. Plexiglas was her
next medium of choice. By 1980 she returned to expressing her artistic
talents in her painting. Between 1982 to 1994 she
produced several series of works. In 1997 she completed Montagnes
(mountains), a granite wall located in the main lobby of President Kennedy
Pavilion of Université
du Quebec in Montreal. In 1997 she was teaching painting at
Concordia University. In 2001 she was inducted into the order of Canada
and the following year she became a Knight in the National Order of Quebec.
In 2005 she earned the Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts.
Mildred Valley Thornton
Born 1890, Dresden, Ontario. Died July 27, 1967, Vancouver, British
Columbia. The family moved to Regina, Saskatchewan in 1913
By 1926 she was married with children, nevertheless she
spent weeks at a time away from home, living with different native
communities across the prairies, gaining the trust and acceptance of her
subjects, who permitted her to attend ceremonies and rituals seldom seen by
non-Natives. She captured Canada's Native history in written word and in
paintings. She settled in Vancouver in 1934, and continued her
interest with aboriginal peoples. The Kwakiutl tribe of British Columbia
made her a princess of the Clan Eagle and named her "Ah-ou-Mookht," meaning
"the one who wears the blanket because she is of noble birth," and the Cree
named her "Owas-ka-esk-ean" or "putting your best ability for us Indians.
"She created more than 300 paintings of ceremonies, dances and Native
people. She was art critic for the Vancouver Sun newspaper for 16
years until retirement in 1959. She served on the executive of the Canadian
Women's Press Club and was a member of the Canadian Authors' Association. In
1960 she became Fellow in the Royal Academy of Arts.
Sources: The Thornton Archives, Westbridge
Publications Online (Accessed December 2012)
Ruth Tulving
92
née Mikkelsaar. Born December 29, 1930, Tartu, Estonia. Died November 16,
2012 Toronto, Ontario. Ruth came to Canada while still a young teenager. In
1950 she married Endel Tulving . The couple have two children. She attended
the Ontario College of Art graduating in 1962 winning the Lieutenant
Governor Medal. She continued her education at L’academie de la grande
Chaumére, Paris and the University of California at Berkley, California,
U.S.A. From 1965-through 1973 she taught at the Ontario College of Art,
Toronto, Ontario. In 1966 she received the National Academy of Design Award.
She has exhibited her works throughout North and South America, Europe and
China with many solo exhibits. In 1977 she was elected a member of the Royal
Academy of Arts. From 1983-1984 she served as President of the Ontario
Society of Artists.
(2019)
Born July 12, 1950 Rochester, New York U.S.A.
Barbara earned an Associate Degree from the Rochester Institute of
Technology's School for American Craftsmen. In 1970 she relocated to Toronto
to attend the Ontario College of are graduating with an Associate Degree. In
1975 she joined the faculty of the Ontario College of Art (OCAD University).
In 1977 she began the Colour Xerox Artist's Program at Visual Art Ontario.
As a photographer and multimedia artist, she is fascinated by current
technological developments, which she mixes with a variety of traditional
art forms. She is a member of the Board of Directors at the Art Gallery at
Harbourfront, now called Power Point, from 1983-1985. She has also served on
the Boards of the City of Toronto Public Art Commission and the curatorial
Team for the International Water Works Exhibition. Her works have been
installed at the Calgary Winter Olympics in 1987, at the Canadian Embassy,
Berlin, Germany. She is in the forefront of post-modern art activity.
In 2000 she was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy. (2018)
Reva Brooks
Born May 10, 1913, Toronto, Ontario. Died January 24, 2004, San
Miguel de Allende, Mexico.. She had
a short working career as a secretary before she met and married a young
artist Leonard Brooks in 1936. During World War ll, Leonard was an official
artist with the Canadian Navy. In 1947 the couple used a veteran Affairs
grant to travel to Mexico for a year to focus on Leonard’s painting. For the
next 50 years, Mexico would remain their base of operations where they
played a pinnacle role in establishing a world renounced artist colony at
San Miguel de Allenade. At 34 years of age Reva picked up a camera and with
a natural eye began taking photos of the people and the countryside in
Mexico. Her works achieved critical acclaim in the U.S. and Europe. The
photographs have appeared in shows and galleries around the world. Canada
was always a part of their soul and the couple served as unique cultural
ambassadors for both counties. In 1992 the formed, at Queen’s University in
Kingston, Ontario, The Leonard and Reva Brooks foundation to house records
of their lives and works. It also promotes the arts in Canada and funds
scholarships for Mexican students to study music.
Source suggested: Leonard and Riva Brooks: a biography of
Canadian artists in exile. By John Virtu, McGill-Queen’s University
Press, 2001. (2021)
Margaret Jane "Nellie" Bryant
Born October
2, 1864 (1865?) Iroquois, Canada West (Ontario). Died July 14, 1947
Winnipeg, Manitoba. Although she intended to be a school teacher when a
photographer saw some sketches he offered to teach her photograph retouching
methods. This led to a life-long career as a photographer. She started doing
tintype and daguerreotype photographs in Ontario at Morrisburg, Augustburg,
and the Thousand Islands. After working at a studio in the Thousand Islands
for seven years, she started her own studio at Iroquois, later moving to
Brockville, Ontario. In 1901, following her marriage, she moved to Winnipeg
with her salesman husband, Harry H. Bryant,
and opened a studio on Fort Street. She is possibly the first photographer
to use dry plates in a camera.
Sources: “Mrs. H. H. Bryant dies, aged 82”,
Winnipeg Free Press,
16 July 1947, page 7. Memorable Manitobans. Profile by Gordon
Goldsborough. Online (Accessed December 2011).
Geneviéve Cadieux
Born July 17,1955 Montreal, Quebec. She earned
her bachelor degree in visual arts from the University of Ottawa. She
is an artist who uses large photographic pieces as her medium of expression.
She is also a sculptor. Her work has been chosen to represent Canada
at 3 international expositions. In 1991 she began teaching at
Concordia University, Montreal. In 1992 one of her more famous works, La
Voie
lactée, a photograph of a woman's re lips displayed on the rooftop
of the
Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal
has become an icon of the city of Montréal. She also had solo exhibitions
across North America, Europe, Brazil and Australia. in 1997 she was a
guest professor in Paris and Grenoble, France. In 2011 she received the
Governor General's Award for Visual and Media Arts. (2018)
Jennifer Dickson
Born September 17, 1936 Piet Relief, Mpumalanga, South
Africa. In the 1950's she studied painting and printmaking at Goldsmiths
College of Art which is part of the University of London, England. In the
early 196-0s she studied at Atelier 17, Paris, France. In 1962 she held her
1st solo exhibition in London, England. While teaching at Brighton College
of Art in England she set up a graduate program in printmaking and
photography. Immigrating to Canada in 1969 she worked as Director O Graphics
at the Sadie Bronfman Centre, Montreal, Quebec. In 1976 she was elected as a
Royal Academician. Relocating to Ottawa she was a lecturer at the University
of Ottawa. She has taken her camera around the world and is well known for
her printmaking techniques combining silkscreen, etching, aquatint and
collograph. In 1995 she became a Member of the Order of Canada.
Marcelle Ferron
Born January 20, 1924 Louiseville, Quebec. Died November 19, 2001. A member
of a group of artists known as les Automatistes she has worked in medium
such as stained glass. She is primarily known for her dynamic paintings. She
uses vibrant colours and fluid forms to cover her canvases.
Dawn Elaine Goss
Born June 27, 1961St Catherines, Ontario. After her
university studies at Brock and Guelph she began her career of travel and
photojournalism. She co-ordinated and co-authored an 18 month photographic
journey along the Trans Canada Highway. Many of her photos were displayed at
the Canadian Pavilion at the World Expo '86. She was the photographer /
writer of the storey of the 1987 Canadian Olympic torch relay. She has
presented articles and photos for such magazines as Maclean's, Equinox,
Canadian Geographic, National Geographic, Newsweek as well as being featured
in several Canadian newspapers. As well as a love for travel she enjoys
playing the piano and cross country skiing.
Angela Grauerholz
Born January 10, 1952 Hamburg, Germany. This artistic
photographer has an international reputation with major exhibitions in
Canada, U.S.A. and Europe. Her works include portraits, scenes, interiors
and exteriors, all with a sense of timelessness. Her works raise a question
of "What is beneath the obvious". (source: the
Canadian Encyclopedia Online accessed May 2003)
Zahra Kazeml
Born 1949 Shiraz, Iran. Died July 10, 2003. She moved to
France in 1974 to study literature and cinema at the University of Paris.
She worked in Africa, Latin-America, the Caribbean and the mid east
including Israel, Iraq and Afghanistan. She became a well established in
film documentaries who's themes were poverty, destitution forced exile
and oppression wherever it appeared in the world. She emigrated with her
family to Canada in 1993. June 23, 2003 she was arrested taking photos
outside Evin Prison in Tehran, Iran. She was subjected to severe torture in
the prison that she was photographing. the Iranian judiciary declared her
death an accident and effectively closed the case. Continued pressure from
individuals and the Canadian government on behalf of its citizen finally, in
February 2005, brought Iran to admit that she had been murdered.
Minna Keen
née Bergman. Born April
5,1861 Arolsen, Germany. Died November 1943. A self taught photographer in
the pioneering days of photography she was the first woman to become a
fellow to the Royal Photographic Society. She came to Canada in 1913 where
commissioned by the Canadian Pacific Railway to photograph the Rockies. She
opened her studio in Toronto and was recognized with awards from Japan,
South Africa, and Australia. The National Archives of Canada and the
Smithsonian Institution in the U.S.A. collect her works.
Ann Martyn
née Lambly. Mrs. John Martyn. Born 1808
Quebec City. She is the 1st Canadian woman to be active with the early
photographic daguerreotype process. She worked with her husband in his
studio in 1847 until his death in 1850. After the death of her husband she
began to advertise under her own name that year until 1853 when she
remarried and gave up the business. She falls from commercial records after
her second marriage, indicating that she devoted herself to her new family
life.
Hannah Maynard
née Hatherly Born
January 17, 1834 Bude, England. Died May 15, 1918. She and her
husband, Richard, immigrated to Canada in 1852. Hannah learned
photography and followed her gold prospecting husband to British Columbia
where she began her own gallery. Richard leaned the trade from her and
became a landscape photographer. Hannah was well known for her
portraits.
Helen Barnard
McCall
Born February 7, 1899 British Columbia. Died May 1957. As an only
child she grew up with an independent spirit out of the necessity of
executing the daily physical tasks of life. She loved to hike and enjoyed
the beauty of nature. After the “boys” returned home from World War l she
married a practically disabled veteran, Hector McCall. Her independence and
strength of spirit allowed her the fortitude to adapt a career to support
herself and her family. There was not a lot of work in the small town of
Gibson’s Landing, British Columbia. She learned photography as self
employment. Living without such luxuries as electricity she processed family
photos of the locals as well as her won work. She showed pioneering spirit
and followed her ideas to produce clear professional works of local evens
and landscapes into popular post cards. Events depicted on her post cards
made local lives seem important. She was the sole supporter of her two
children during the Great Depression, providing not only for her family but
leaving a legacy of recorded regional history from her own
self-determination and common sense. Source:
Saskatoon Women’s Calendar Collective. Herstory 2007: the Canadian Women’s
Calendar (Regina: Couteau Books, 2006) pg. 22
Silvia Pecota
Born 1961 Toronto, Ontario. As a child he
loved to draw but it was soon through the eye of a camera that she would
show her artistic tendencies. Her camera is always ready by her side. Her
photographic works have appeared in North American and European
publications. She is the firs Canadian woman to hold an exhibition in the
former Soviet Union. She has also had her works exhibited in Germany, Italy
and Australia as well as at home in Canada. She enjoys portraiture and is
well known for her photographs of sport figures. Her interest in sport led
her to complete a short documentary on boxing. In 1994 she was introduced to
the Canadian arctic when doing a documentary shoot. Finding that the child
did not seem to have much for entertainment she launched an effort to
collect hockey equipment for the children of northern Canada. In turn this
led to her first book Hockey across Canada (Mini Mundus Publishing, 2003)
that includes images digitally created by combining her photographs with
painting. It has since been translated into Inuktitut. Who knows what books
will follow.
Nina Raginsky
Born April 14,1941. Choosing a career as a
photographer, by 1964 she was doing freelance work for the National Film
Board of Canada. She first expanded her photographic expression by hand
colouring sepia prints and then began to create oil paintings based on
photographs. She is perhaps best known for her formal full figure
portraits. She is an Officer in the Order of Canada.
Michelle Valberg
Born January 8. She studied photography at Algonquin College and then at the
University of Ottawa. She owns and operates a combined photography gallery
and studio in Ottawa. She is a self published author of several books
including Dare to Dream: aCelebration of Canadian women,
which showcases 100 inspirational women. Her volunteer work includes being a
board member of the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO) and the
SCO Health Services Foundation. She is also co-chair of Capital Talk, an
Ottawa based group that organizes local charity fundraisers. In 2000 she was
the YMCA/YWCA Woman of Distinction in the arts category for Ottawa. In 2003
the Women’s Business Network named her as Ottawa’s Businesswoman of the
Year. The following year she received recognition of the Ottawa Business
Journal as a member of 40 under 40 Award. In 2005 she was given St.
Joe’s Women’s Shelter Quality of Life Award and was Algonquin Colleges’
Alumnus of the Year.
Sources:
www.valberimaging.com accessed June2011; Women in Ottawa:
Mentors and Milestones
http://womeninottawa.blogspot.com Accessed June 2011.
Born Lindsay,
Ontario. She studied at Malaspine College/university, Nanaimo, British
Columbia. She worked at 21 as head of Props at the Royal Manitoba Theatre
Center. In 1981, while working at the Stratford Theatre in Ontario she
earned the Guthrie Award. In 1985 the Canada Council allowed her to pursue
arts explorations in Japan and Europe. She designed the famous bronze statue
of Glen Gould sitting on a bench displayed outside the CBC building in
Toronto in 1999. She has since sculpted numerous well known personalities
such as former Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, poet John McCrae,
renowned golfer Arnold Palmer, actor Al Waxman, and jazz great Oscar
Peterson which was unveiled by Queen Elizabeth in 2010. Her works have been
exhibited throughout North America, Australia and Europe. Many of her full
body life size statues include room for people to sit next to the statue so
that fans can be photographed beside their favourite personality. She has
also worked in textiles, lace and stainless steel. Source:
Ruth Abernethy,
www.Ruthabernethy.com
(accessed September 2005).
Dinah Anderson
Born May 10, 1956 Okak Bay,
Labrador. As a child she remembers that her family were part of a native
relocation program that took them to Goose Bay, Labrador. Here they were
taught English in school and even today she suffers from the loss of her
maternal native language. She would go to Memorial University in
Newfoundland to take the Teacher Education Program and this wetted her
appetite for more education. She graduated in Fine Arts from the University
of Ottawa in 1994. During her summers she had done some carving with
soapstone but it was not until she began working at the Nain Carving
workshop the she became dedicated to sculpting.
Lois Etherington Betteridge
Born November 6, 1928, Drummondville, Quebec. Died February 21, 2020,
Guelph, Ontario Lois spend her youth in Hamilton, Ontario
and attended the Ontario College of Art and went on to study at the
University of Kansas to earn a Bachelor of Fine Art in 1951. Back home in
Ontario she took classes at what is now Ryerson University, Toronto and from
1954-1956 she attended the Cranbrook Academy of art to complete a Master’s
degree in Fine Art. After graduation with $500.00 funding from her father
she opened a small studio in Oakville, Ontario. By 1953 she had relocated
her studio to Toronto. She made custom-designed jewellery and hollowware for
her clients. for three years taught weaving, design and metal arts at the
MacDonald Institute (now part of the
University of Guelph).
Resigning from teaching she planned to study in England but instead met and
married Keith Betteridge , a student at the Ontario Veterinary College,
Guelph, Ontario. The couple moved to England in 1961 where they started
their family and she established a studio. The family were back in Canada in
1967 and Lois began to work more with hollowware. She taught and
lectured and began offering apprenticeships at her studio. By the 1970 her
work shifted to more organic forms. Her works were shown throughout Canada
and Europe. She has taught and mentored numerous Canadian metal artists who
have achieved prominence. In 1974 she became a Distinguished Member of the
Society of North American Goldsmiths and the following year she received
Distinguished Professional Achievement at the University of Kansas. In 1978
she became a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts and was the
recipient of the Saidy Bronfman Award for Excellence in Crafts. In 1997 she
was inducted into the Order of Canada. 2002 YM/YWCA Woman of Distinction
Award for Lifetime Achievement. In 2002 she received the Queen Elizabeth II
Golden Jubilee Medal, Government of Canada and in 2010 she earned the
Lifetime Achievement Award, from the Society of North American Goldsmiths.
In 2012 she received the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal and
in 2014 she won the John and Barbara Mather Award for Lifetime Achievement,
Craft Ontario.
Source: Obituary (2020)
Sandra Bromley
A multidisciplinary artist who's works
have appeared in solo and group exhibitions in Europe, Asia and North
America. She graduated from the University of Alberta in 1979 with a
Bachelor of Fine arts with distinction in sculpture. She has received
numerous awards throughout her career, including the 2000 Salute to
Excellence arts Award from the City of Edmonton and the 2002/3 Canadian
Consortium on Human Security Non-academic Fellowship which she is using to
create artwork on women and children in post-conflict countries.
Martha Cole
Born 1946,
Regina Saskatchewan, Saskatchewan. While still a young teen she decided that
she would be an artist. During her high school years she was encouraged by
her teachers. She earned a Bachelor in Fine Arts at the University of
Washington in Seattle, U.S.A. Returning to Canada in 1970 she moved to
Toronto where she worked as slide librarian at the Fine Arts Department of
the University of Toronto. She earned her bachelor of education and went on
to teach art at a Toronto high school. By 1976 she was back in Saskatchewan
wanting to work part time as a teacher and take time for her art. She
purchased an old church in Disley, a town of 48 people just outside of
Regina. She began sewing artistic works. In 1984 she had her 1st fabric
based exhibition in Regina. In 1956 she became fascinated with artistic
books, binding for the sake of art. Sources:
Herstory; A Canadian Woman’s Calendar 2000. Coteau Books, 1999. ; Martha
Cole.ca accessed August 2011.
Sylvia Daoust
Born May 24,1902, Montréal, Québec. Died
July 19, 2004, Montreal, Quebec. In1915-1916 she studied at Montreal and
also studied for her teaching diploma. In 1929 she was awarded a provincial
government scholarship to study her art in France. While in Europe she
gained a respect and deep interest in religious art carvings for
altar-pieces and architectural decorations used in church ceremonies. She
returned to Canada to teach at the Ecole des beaux-arts in Montreal and
Ville de Québec. In 1944 she became a member of the Sculptor's Society of
Canada and in 1951 she was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of Art. Her
liturgical carvings capture drama with grace and simplicity. She is also a
talented portrait artist and has completed works in plaster and bronze. Her
life-sized bronze sculpture of Nicholas Viel is part of the facade of the
Quebec Assemblée Nationale. In 1976 she became a Member of the Order of
Canada. Source: Art Publique Montreal Online(2020)
Dora de Pédery-Hunt
Born November 16, 1913, Budapest, Hungary. Died September 29,
2008.
Toronto, Ontario. Dora studied at the Royal School for Applied Art graduating with a Master of
Fine Arts in 1943. A sculptor and designer of medals she came to Canada in
1948. She has been honoured with the Order of Ontario and the Order of
Canada for her works. The Canada Centennial Medal. The Olympic Gold coin in
1976 and the Canadian National Arts Centre Medal are among her many
artistic achievements. The Ontario College of Art presents an award named in
her honour. She has lectured internationally for Art galleries and similar
groups. Canadians carry some of her creations with them in the form of
Canadian coins with the image of the Queen. Source:
Dora de Pédery-Hunt web site (2020)
Shirley Elford
née
Sinclair. Born 1943. Died November 2011. In 1963 she met and went on to
marry Gerry Elford and the couple had 2 daughters. At 23, she
received a grant to study glass making in Egypt and celebrated her birthday
on the Nile.
Shirley attended Dundas Valley School of Art, and after her family set off
for high school she set off studying glass-making at the Ontario College of
Art and Sheridan College. An artist and creator of unique works in glass she
received national acclaim for her new design of the Juno - Canada’s most
prestigious music award - for the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and
Sciences. She has served as president of the Theatre Aquarius and the Glass
Art Association of Canada. She also served as chair of acquisitions for the
Art Gallery of Hamilton, Ontario. She was honorary co-chair of
Strengthening Hamilton’s Community Initiative. She was a board member of
Hamilton Health Sciences Foundation and Hamilton Community Foundation. She
has also served as chair of art for the Hamilton Public Library. She has
represented Canada on the international Glass Art Society board. In
2001-2006 she served as a member of the Board of Directors of the Hamilton
Community Foundation. In 2003 she founded the Angel Fund in support of
mental health. In 2010 she created the Gift for Today Fund for those
experiencing ovarian cancer.
Frances Marie Gage
Born August 22, 1924 Windsor, Ontario. Died November 26, 2017
Cobourg, Ontario. During World War ll Frances served as an intelligence
officer with the Women's Royal Canadian Naval Service (Wrens). A year after
leaving the services she attended the Ontario College of Art, Toronto
graduating in 1951. She went on to study at the Art Student's League of New
York, U.S.A. and L'Ecole des beau-arts in Paris, France. Returning to Canada
in 1957 she began sculpting. In 1959 she traded one of her works , The Bear,
in order to build her own studio on Birch Avenue in Toronto. Her works were
exhibited internationally from Colorado, U.S.A., to Finland and London,
England. She was over the years often commissioned to complete work by the
provincial Government. She also did commissioned pieces for the Women's
College Hospital, Toronto. In 1972 she completed The Jenny which
commemorated the Wrens.
Elizabeth Bradford Holbrook
Born November 7, 1913, Hamilton, Ontario. Died February 23, 2009, Hamilton,
Ontario. While she could draw at an early age it was only when she was in
High school that she became cognizant of her artistic spirit. She attended
the Ontario College of Art from 1932-1935 where graduated winning the
Lieutenant Governor's Medal for Sculpture. She followed up with training
spending a year at the Royal College of Art in London England. She married
John ‘Jack’ Grant, a dentist on. The couple had 3 children. Elizabeth also
studied at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, U.S.A.
in 1948.’Her works include the busts of Prime Minister John Diefenbaker and
Hon. Ellen Fairclough commissioned for the Parliament Buildings. One of her
crowning achievements to date has been a bronze bust portrait for St. John's
Newfoundland of the late Sir Winston Churchill. She has received numerous
medals of honour including one of Ken Taylor encircled in American and
Canadian flags. She has received the National Sculpture Society of New York
Gold Medal and the accolades of art critics worldwide. She participated in
annual exhibitions in the Royal Canadian Academy, Montreal Museum of Fine
Arts, Ontario Society of Artists and Art Gallery of Hamilton. Her work is
also in public collections in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington,
D.C., National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa as well as such local venues as
the Art Gallery of Hamilton, McMaster University, Royal Botanical Gardens
and St John's Church in Ancaster. She was a lecturer at the Dundas Valley
School of Art from 1965-1969 at the Burlington, Ontario Cultural Centre from
1990-1993 and at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario from 1995-1999. She
was also a gifted equestrian and breeder of New Forest Ponies. In 1977 she
was awarded the Queen Elizabeth ll Silver Jubilee Medal and in 1987 she was
Woman of the Year in the Arts from the City of Hamilton. In 1992 she
received the Ontario Society of Arts Award. She also received the 1992 125th
Anniversary of Confederation Medal. She has been appointed as Fellow
with the Ontario College of Art, and in 1997 was inducted into the Order of
Ontario and the Order of Canada.
Anne Kahane
Born March 1, 1926 Vienna, Austria. Anne immigrated to Montreal with her
parents when she was 5 years old. It was at the Montreal Ecole des beaux
arts that she took her early formal art lessons. This sculptor emigrated
from Austria with her parents in 1925. During the mid 1940's Anne studied at
Cooper Union School, New York City, U.S.A. In 1953 she was the only Canadian
winning international prizes for her3-dimensional figures carved in wood,
works. Her woodcarvings are the decorative panels for the Winnipeg airport,
Winnipeg General Hospital, and Montreal’s Place des Arts. Her
work has been shown nationally and internationally,
representing Canada at the Canadian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, the
Canadian Pavilion at the Worlds Fair, Brussels, and at Expo 67 in Montreal Abandoning
wood in the late 1970's she began to work with sheets of aluminum with her
first showing of this new medium at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario
in 1980-1982.
Maryon Kantaroff
Born November 20, 1933, Toronto, Ontario. Died June 9, 1919, Toronto,
Ontario. Maryon studied piano at the Royal Conservatory of Music and
graduated from the University of Toronto with a degree in art and
archaeology. After graduation she worked at the Art Gallery of
Ontario. Returning to school she travelled to London, United Kingdom for her
postgraduate studied in American Ethnology at the British Museum. In 1962
her 1st solo exhibition was at the Temple Gallery, London. She returned to
Toronto in 1968.This sculptor has had showings of her works
in Toronto, Los Angeles, Milan (Italy), and Japan. One of her sculptures was
chosen to be installed in the Canadian Embassy in Tokyo, Japan. She opened
and maintained her own foundry for 14 years. Her works have been recognized
with awards from the Sculptor's Society of Canada and she was the YMCA Woman
of Distinction in 1992. A supporter of the feminist movement she has
contributed articles on art and feminists. She is a founding member of the
Toronto New Feminists and is a passionate speaker on this subject as well as
the subject of art history. While she may be best known for her rather large
cast art works she also had created some limited edition jewelry.
(2020)
Bylee Fay Lang
Born 1908 Didsbury, Alberta. Died 1963. A sculptor of
significance she studied art at the Ontario College of Art in Toronto and
later studied in Munich , Germany. In 1936 she established a private school
of sculpture in Winnipeg and in 1939 she joined staff at the Winnipeg School
of Art. She transplanted herself to Bermuda where she is remembered for a
figure of Christ and the apostles in the Cathedral of Bermuda.
Marilyn Levine
née Hayes. Born December 22, 1935 Medicine Hat, Alberta. Died April 10,
2005. Even though her parents were interested in art, she chose to earn her
B.A. in Chemistry at the University of Alberta. Her Masters in Science
followed in 1959. That same year she married chemist Sydney Levine and the
couple relocated to Regina, Saskatchewan. It was here that she regained an
interest in art taking various courses at the University of Saskatchewan.
She also taught Chemistry at the Campton College in Regina. After her first
solo art showing in 1966, she never looked back and embraced her art career
and shortly after moved to California. While in California Marilyn joined
the Graduate Sculpture Program at the University of California, Berkley and
received a Master of Arts in 1970 and a Master of Fine Arts in sculpture in
1971. She returned to the University of Saskatchewan, Regina and taught
ceramics and pottery for two years. She left for Utah , Salt Lake City
in 1973 and also taught at the University of California. Her works She
became internationally acclaimed as a sculptor and artist working with
ceramics to create hyper-realistic art that looks like leather or canvas.
She created a process that added chopped nylon fibre to a stoneware base for
her unique works.
Sources: “Marilyn Levine dies at 69…” by Roberta Smith, New York Times
April 10, 2005 ; City of Regina. Heritage and History. Online Accessed
January 2012.
Frances Norma Loring
Born
October 14, 1887 Wardner, Idaho U.S.A. Died
February 5, 1968 Newmarket, Ontario. Frances studied in Switzerland,
Germany, and Paris, as well as in Chicago, New York, and Boston in the
U.S.A. It was while she was the Art Institute of Chicago that
she met Florence Wyle (1881-1968), another Canadian sculpture who became a
lifelong friend and collaborator. She chose to open a studio with Florence
in Toronto in 1913 to show her sculptures. During
World War l, the Canadian War Records Office commissioned Frances to make
sculptures of industrial workers on the home front. Her architectural
designs, war memorials and monuments earned her a reputation as one of the
1st women known for her sculptures in Canada. The National Gallery in
Ottawa has obtained her works as well as the Art Gallery of Ontario. Some
works grace the grounds of the parliament buildings in Ottawa predominantly
the statue of Sir Robert Borden. She was co-founder of the Sculptors
Society of Canada in 1928. Frances was also active in the Federation of
Canadian Artists which was a forerunner to the National Arts Council founded
in 1955. The Loring -Wyle Parkette in Toronto is home to two busts, the
Loring-by-Wyle and the Wylie-by-Loring.
Rose Eleanor Milne
Born May 14,
1925, St John, New Brunswick. . Died May 17, 2014. Her primary education was
at convents and then she attended Montreal Museum School of Fine Arts.
McGill University Laboratory of Anatomy, Montreal, Quebec and then the
Central College of Arts and Crafts, London , England. Returning home she
attended the L’Ecole des beaux arts, Montreal and then Syracuse University
in New York State, U.S.A. She received numerous awards for her
artistry including honorary doctorates from 4 universities and the Order of
Canada. 1962-to 1993 she was the Dominion Sculptor with works displayed in
the halls of the House of Commons, Ottawa. She also designed a stained
glass window at the Parliament buildings. . After her retirement as Dominion
Sculptor she accepted private commissions and worked with computer art. Source:
Obituary, Ottawa Citizen June 6, 2012.
Suggestion submitted by June Coxon, Ottawa, Ontario.
Ellen Neel
Born 1916,
Albert Bay, Cormorant Island, British Columbia. Died February 1966. Her
grandfather Kwakwaka’wakus, was a famous totem pole carver. It was by
working at his side when she was young that she gained a love for this art.
As a youngster she had actually carved small totem poles for tourists to
purchase. Ellen Married Edward Neal and the couple had six children. In 1993
the family moved to Vancouver, British Columbia. Her husband suffered a
stroke and was unable to work so Ellen carved more of her miniature totem
poles for tourists. She taught her own children the techniques she had
learned from her grandfather. Soon the City of Vancouver provided them with
space for a workshop in the famous Stanley Park, In the park Ellen was
enticed to restore and carve full-size totem poles. In 1955 she carved a
thunderbird totem for Woodward’s Department Stores. Depressed by the
accidental death of a son and ill herself she sold her carving tools and
family heirlooms. Ellen played a crucial role in establishing Native arts as
a viable way for Natives to support their communities and continue their
heritage. She had also served as a mentor and role model for future women
carvers. In 1985 the University if British Columbia Museum of Anthropology
erected one of the totem poles they had commissioned from Ellen Neal in
Stanley Park, where it is still on display. The totem pole she donated to
the University of British Columbia was recreated by master carvers and
rededicated in 2004 with an elaborate ceremony presided over by the
Kwakwaka’wakw Chief of the Heiltsuk Nation. Her family tradition handed to
her by her grandfather is alive today as Ellen’s grandson,
David Neel,
is a carver, jeweler, painter, photographer, and author active today in
British Columbia.
Source: Herstory: and Canadian Woman’s Calendar. 2012. Coteau Books,
2011
Barbara A. Paterson
Born 1936 Edmonton, Alberta. Barbara followed her love of art to earn a
diploma in Fine Arts from the University of Alberta. She went on to earn her
BA in Fine arts from the same institution. As a sculptor she is perhaps best
known for her bronze statue of the Famous Five which was commissioned to
honour the Persons Case of 1927. The statue was unveiled by Governor General
Adrienne Clarkson in Calgary’s Olympic Square on October 18, 1999. A second
copy of the monument was unveiled on October 18, 2000 on Parliament Hill,
the 1st statue on the Hill dedicated to Canadian Women. The larger of life
statue shows the members of the Famous Five group of women, Nellie McClung
(1873-1951), Emily Murphy (1868-1933), Henrietta Muir Edwards (1849-1931),
Louise McKinney (1868-1931) and Irene Parleby (1868-1965) having tea and
looking at the declaration of the ‘persons Case’. Her works have been
exhibited from Singapore to New York City, U.S.A. and are held in
collections across Canada and abroad. She has also sculpted larger than life
statues of Emily Carr in Victoria British Columbia, Father Coady in
Antagonist, Nova Scotia and former Alberta Governor General Lois Hole in St
Albert, Alberta. In 2000 she received the Distinguished Alumni Award from
the University of Alberta.
Amelia Mildred Ross
SEE - Painters
Aiko Geraldine Suzuki
Born 1937 Vancouver, British Columbia.
Died December 31, 2005. As a young child she and her family lived in
internment camp in British Columbia.
Her parents gave their children both North American and Japanese names. In
the late 1950’s , Gerry began to mesh her love of art and her family
heritage, using the name Aiko. A sculptor, painter, printmaker, dance set
designer, curator and teacher, her works are in private and public
collections across the country. Her fabric art was a fixture at the Toronto
Reference Library from 1981-2004 when the hanging was removed for cleaning.
In 1994 she was given the Woman of Distinction Award (arts) from the
Toronto YWCA. Always independent and strong, she raised her daughter as a
single parent. Even though she suffered constant pain from rheumatoid
arthritis, she worked and produced works of great beauty. She worked right
to the end of her life, with her last show of her paintings opening the day
of her memorial service.
Lucy Tasseor Tutsweetok
Born 1934 Nunalla, Manitoba. Died April 12, 2012 Arviat Nunavut. Lucy began
carving in the 1960’s and is best known for multiple head images. In 1960
she married Richard Tutsweetok in Rankin Inlet and the couple settled in
Arviat. The images were inspired by a drawing in the sand by her
grandfather. She also produced family images of mothers and children and
expanded families. She chose her materials carefully and enjoyed the initial
shape of the material carving heads and or arms using the natural shape of
the stone providing an austere minimalist style. Her sculptures were
included in the 1970 Sculpture exhibit for the Centennial of the Northwest
Territories. Her works were exhibited nationally and internationally and
twice at the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Ottawa in 1988 and 1992.
[2017]
Katherine Elizabeth Wallis
Born 1860 or 1861, Merino, Canada West (now Ontario).
Died December 14, 1957. Katherine studied art 1st at the Toronto Art School
in Ontario and then in Scotland, London, England, and Paris France. It was
her that she would come to love sculpting. She moved to Paris and continued
her studies. In 1897 her sculptures were on exhibit at the Royal Academy of
Arts, London, England. Her art career was interrupted during World War
1 when she served as a nurse in the Canadian Hospital in Paris. She was
honoured and decorated by both the French and British governments for her
services. Her 1st Canadian exhibition of her work was in 1920. She returned
to Paris and in 1929 she received
her highest recognition as an artist when she was
the 1st Canadian to be elected Societaire of the
Societé Nationale de Beaux Arts for her sculpture titled "La
Lutte pour la Vie". She fled from France at the beginning of World War II
and settled in Santa Cruz, California, U.S.A. As well as being a sculptor
she also enjoyed painting. . She also enjoyed writing verse and published
Chips From the Block: Poems in New York in 1955.She bequeathed
her art collection to the City of Peterborough, Ontario and it is housed in
the Peterborough Museum and Archives. (2019)
Lauren Waters
Born 1960,
Mississauga, Ontario. Growing up she learned to love and respect nature
while on long walks in the woods with her Dad. She studied at McMaster
University, Hamilton, Ontario and went on to the University of British
Columbia, Vancouver to study forestry. She became a registered professional
forester. In 2001 she began courses at Selkirk College in British Columbia
in fine wood working. While still a student, one of her projects won the
National Furniture Design Completion in Toronto. She now runs her own shop
in Revelstoke, British Columbia featuring unique furniture. She has helped
to organize a community woodworking studio to share her knowledge and
skills. She has also worked with municipal officials to develop an urban
forestry plan. In 2006 she was names Woodworker of the year for the Canadian
Workshop Magazine, the 1st woman to earn this accolade..
Source: Herstory: The Canadian Women's calendar. 2008
(Saskatoon Women's Calendar Collective / Coteau Books, 2007)
Colette Whiten
Born February 7, 1945 Birmingham, England. In 1972 this
author won the Governor General's Medal when she graduated from the Ontario
College of Art. Her works have been exhibited across Canada and the U.S.A.
as well as Europe and Brazil. She teaches at the Ontario College of art and
was a teacher at York University in Toronto. Her commissioned sculptures
have included a wall construction with figurative cutouts for the Mental
Health centre in 1978, the 1988 Olympics in Calgary, Weathervanes or the
Bankers Hall in Calgary in 1991 and Tender at the Workman's Compensation
Office in Toronto.
Irene F. Whittome
Born March 6, 1942 Vancouver,
British Columbia. After her early studies at the Vancouver School of
Art in British Columbia she went on study in Paris France where she chose
etchings as her 1st major form of artistic expression. Returning to Canada
she attended Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec. By 1975 she
had produced a series of sculptures and went on to use the medium of hand
made paper relief and sculptures to produce several one-woman shows in many
Canadian galleries and museums. Her modern works continue to receive acclaim
and awards, including the Victor-Martyn-Staunton Award in 1991. In
1992, she received an award from the Gershon-Iskowitz Foundation. In 1997
she was awarded Québec's Prix Paul Émile Borduas and in 2002 she received a
Governor General's Visual and Media Arts Award. in 2005 she became an
officer in the Order of Canada. (2017)
Elizabeth Wyn Wood
Born October 8, 1903 Orillia, Ontario.
Died January 27, 1966 Toronto,
Ontario.
Elizabeth graduated from the Ontario College of Art in 1925.
As a sculptor she became involved with the Federation of Canadian
Artists and the Canadian Arts Council. She worked in “modern” materials like
tin for her sculptures. in 1944 she was the founding secretary of the Canadian Arts Council and
from 1945 through 1948 she served as chair of the International Relations
Committee Her large pieces may be seen in a parks in Welland in
the Welland-Crowland War Memorial dedicated in 1939.
In 1962 she created bas-relief sculptures at Ryerson University in
Toronto. In Niagara Falls a monument of King George VI was
unveiled in 1963.
In 1966 she was inducted into the Orillia Hall of Fame.
Florence Norma Wyle 26
Born November 24, 1881 Trenton, Illinois,
U.S.A.. Died January 14,1968 Newmarket, Ontario. Originally Florence wanted
to be a doctor and she entered
the
University of Illinois in Urbana. She became fascinated with the human
anatomy. In 1903 she entered the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in
Illinois to study clay modeling. Here she studied under Frances Loring
(1887-1968). Florence would become partners with Frances Loring setting in
1909 in New York City and in Toronto, Ontario in 1913.
In 1920, Loring and Wyle moved into an old abandoned church.
This location became their home and their studio. It also became a gathering
place for Toronto's artistic community and the headquarters of the
Sculptors' Society of Canada (SSC). She
was a co-founder member of the Sculptor's Society of Canada in 1928.
She was the 1st woman sculptor to become a full member
of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. Her work was often
exhibited by the Women's Art Association of Canada. She worked on numerous
Canadian War Memorials for WW 1. Much of her work was cast in Bronze,
but she also carved stone, marble and wood. in 1953 she was a
recipient of the Queen Elizabeth ll Coronation Medal. She had a love of
nature that was reflected in her two volumes of published poems.
In 2000 the Canadian Portrait
Academy made Wyle an Honorary Academician naming her one of the Top 100
Artists of the 20th Century.
(2019)
Born October 24, 1930 Longueil, Quebec. Died September 29, Quebec City,
Quebec. Micheline studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Montreal prior to
attending the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and Académie de la Grande Chaumére,
Paris, France. Her 1st work was in stained glass and in 1953 she had a show
in Chartres, France of her stained glass work. In 1955 she exhibited
her 1st tapestries at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Chartres, France. In 1957
she returned home to Canada. She designed and made the stage curtain of the
National Arts Centre, Ottawa in the late 1960's. She also was commissioned
to create works for Queen's Park, Toronto, York University, Toronto, the
Hudson's Bay Company, Winnipeg, and the Pearson International Airport,
Toronto. In 1970 she created a tapestry for display at the Canadian Pavilion
at the Osaka, Japan, World's Fair. She is considered one of Canada's
foremost tapestry weavers. In 1970 she
became an elected member of the Royal Academy of Arts. In 1973 she was names
an Officer in the Order of Canada. In 1991 she was inducted as Knight of the
National Order of Quebec. In 2005 she received the Prix Paul-Emile-Borduas
from the Quebec Government. In 2006 she earned the Governor General's Award
in Visual and Media Arts. Some of her works reside in the collections of the
Place des Arts, Montreal, the National Arts Center, Ottawa, and
internationally in Tokyo, and San Francisco, U.S.A..
Helen Frances Gregor
née Lorenz.
Born June 28, 1921 Prague, Czechoslovakia. Died May 25, 1989 Seoul, South
Korea. In 1940 she and her family relocated to England to escape the events
of World War ll. Helen studied art at Newark Technical College, Birmingham
College of art and the Royal College of Art, London. She married Tibor
Gregor (d 2008) and the couple had two children. The family moved to
Canada and she worked as a teacher at the Ontario College of Art, Toronto.
In 1952 she helped establish served as Head of the Textile Department. She
was a member of the
Royal Canadian
Academy of Arts, the
Ontario Society of
Artists, and the
Ontario Crafts
Council. She won Ontario Crafts
Council's Mather Award in 1982. She was appointed as a Member of the
Order of Canada
in 1987. the same year her book, The Fabric of My Life: Reflections of
Helen Frances Gregor, was published. The Ontario Crafts
Council established the Helen Frances Gregor scholarship in her honour.
(2019)
née Martin. Born June 25, 1927 Saint John, New
Brunswick. Patricia's artistic talents were recognized
while she was quite young and she was given formal
private studies in art when she was just 12. She went on
to study at the Academie Royale des beaus-arts, the
royal Academy of fine arts in Belgium at the Sorbonne,
Paris, France and the Pratt Graphic Centre in New York,
U.S.A. A highly innovative artist, she brought
imagination to her artistic prints. Some of her works
are two sided! She is primarily known for her
printmaking and her embossing techniques. She limits her
colours to black, white, and silver and is inspired by
the art of the Islamic Middle East and Zen Buddhists. In
the 1960's she became known for her Plexiglas cube
sculptures. She taught from 1965 at the University of
Victoria, British Columbia where she became a full
professor in 1977. That same year she was presented the
Queen Elizabeth ll Silver Jubilee Medal. She has also
earned the Zachenta Medal from Poland and the
International Print Art of Norway Gold Medal. She had
exhibited her works in China, Chile, Yugoslavia. Poland,
Great Britain, Norway, Japan, France, Argentina, Spain,
Switzerland, Germany, Austral is and the United States. The Pat Martin Bates Scholarship in Visual Arts
was established by
Canadian Federation of University Women of Victoria. Her
biography has been written by Patricia Bovey, Pat
Martin Bates: Balancing on a Thread.
Rebecca Belmore
Aboriginal Artist
Born March 22, 1960 Upsala, Ontario. As a youth she spent her
summers with her grandparents where she was taught traditions of the Ojibwe
peoples such as harvesting native foods from the land. As a teen she was
sent to school in Thunder Bay, Ontario where she lived with a non-Native
family and experiences culture loss. Rebecca attended the Ontario College of
Art and Design, Toronto in 1988. In 2005 she was the 1st Aboriginal woman to
resent Canada at the Venice Biennale an International Art Exhibition. She
has presented work in biennial exhibitions nationally and internationally
throughout her career. Her art addresses history, voice and voicelessness,
place and identity. In 2004 she completed a residency with the Mentoring
Artists for Women's Art, Winnipeg, Manitoba. In 2013 she received the
Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts. In 2016 she
received the Gershon Iskowitz Prize which raises the awareness of the visual
arts in Canada. (2019)
Diana Zoe Coop
Born April 9, 1952 Chicago Illinois,
U.S.A.. She earned her fine arts degree at the University of Manitoba in
1972 and then was off to England for post graduate studies and took her
masters in fine art at Syracuse University. She has designed many of the
colourful street banners that have graced the streets of Vancouver. She has
had exhibits of her works across Canada. She is also an enthusiastic
supporter of Rhythmic Gymnastics and is a Canadian National Judge in the
sport. She enjoys a hobby of designing a painting costumes for competitors
in the sport of Rhythmic Gymnastics and has produced costumes for groups in
the Olympic Games and world championships.
Vera Cryderman
née Macintyre Born 1897
Dutton, Ontario. Died November 19, 1969. Known by the
nickname “Mackie” She was trained in commercial art and
interior decorating in both Winnipeg, Manitoba and
Detroit Michigan, U.S.A. In 1927 she established the
first art department for high schools in London,
Ontario. The school was the first to use plastic as a
medium for art projects. She set up courses in stone
cutting and polishing to produce fine jewellery. In 1962
she set up and supervised the Visual Arts Department at
Fanshaw College in London. Not only did she design
unusual jewellery, she loved rings, but she also
designed and made her own furniture. She is also known
for her fine water colour paintings and prints.
Jennifer Dickson
Born September 17, 1936 Piet Retief, South Africa. She
studied art at Goldsmiths College at the University of
London, England and Atelier 17 in Paris, France. She
earned the Prix de jeunes artistes pour gravure in 1962
She has lived in England, France, Jamaica and the United
States before 1969 when she immigrated to Canada
settling at first in Montreal, Quebec. She soon was
deeply involved with the local artist community and in
1976 she was elected as a Royal Academician, which
consists of 80 practicing artists elected by the General
Assembly of the Royal Academy. She relocated to Ottawa,
Ontario in 1974 and joined the faculty of the University
of Ottawa. In 1980 she was awarded the Biennale Prize of
the fifth Norwegian International Print Biennale. She
has also been a guest lecturer at 9 universities in the
U.S.A. Traveling the world she is known for her
photographs of natural and manmade landscapes. She is
known for her printmaking techniques combining
silkscreen, etching, aquatint and collograph. In 1988
her book, the Hospital for Wounded Angels was chosen by
the Association of Canadian Publishers to represent
Canada at the London Book Fare. In 1995 she was
inducted as a Member in the Order of Canada. In April
2002 her works considered to have national significance
were deposited in the National Archives of Canada.
Francoise Desrochers-Drolet
Born 1921, Beauport, Quebec. Died 1998 Beauport, Quebec.
In 1942 she attended the L’Ecole des beaux-arts de
Quebec. In 1948 she traveled to France and Italy to
learn more of ceramics and enameling. In Canada she
became a pioneer of enameling as an art. In 1949 she
took additional courses from L’Ecole des Beaux-arts de
Quebec and opened her own studio. In 1951 she had a sols
exhibition of her works. In 1954 she earned a prize in
the Decorative Arts category from the Province of
Quebec. She married Jean Paul Drolet.
Source: Canadian Women Artists Initiative. Accessed
September 2014
Vera Frenkel
Born
November 10, 1938
Bratazalava, Czechoslovakia.
Her family 1st settled in England prior to Vera find her
way to Canada. Vera holds a degree in Fine Arts from
McGill University, Montreal. Since the early 1970's she
has shown her works in group and solo exhibitions.
including exhibitions at the National Gallery of Canada,
the Museum of Contemporary Art, Toronto, Ontario, the
Setagaya Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan, the Museum of
Modern Art, New York, U.S.A. and the Biennale di
Venezia, Venice, Italy. She is recognized
internationally for her artistic prints and sculptures.Since 1974 she has experimented with video as an artistic
medium writing and producing notable works. She is an
innovative teacher and has published her poetry
illustrated with her own artwork. In 1989 she received
the Canada Council Molson Prize and in 1993 the Gershon
Iskowitz Prize. This was followed in 1994 with the
Toronto Arts Foundation Visual Arts Award. That same
year she co-authored Vera-Frenkel: From the Transit
Bar =--du transitbar. In 2005 she earned the
Governor General's Awards in Visual Media Arts. In 2007
she received the iDMAa Pioneering Achievement Award.
Ydessa Hendeles
Artist-curator
Born December 27,1948 Marburg, Germany.
Ydessa's parents were survivors of the Nazi
concentration camp of Auschwitz, Germany. Once they were
liberated they settled in Marburg, Germany prior to
immigrating to Canada in 1951. Jacob Hendeles sent up an
profitable real estate business in Toronto, Ontario.
Ydessa graduated from the University of Toronto. Later
she attended the New School of Art, the Toronto Art
Therapy Institute, and earned a PhD cum
laude from The Amsterdam School for Cultural
Analysis at the University of Amsterdam, The
Netherlands. Ydessa set up the Ydessa Gallery in 1980
where she presented works of Canadian contemporary
artists. Closing the Gallery in 1988 she established a
nonprofit art foundation in an old factory on King
Street West in downtown Toronto providing a large
exhibition space for contemporary art including some of
her own works. For over 25 years she curated exhibitions
before closing the doors of the gallery in 2012 but
continues her support for artists. In 1998 she was
inducted into the Order of Ontario and became a Fellow
of the Ontario College of Art and Design. In 2002 she
received a Governor General's Award and received the
Queen Elizabeth ll Golden Jubilee Medal. Ydessa received
the 2004 "Founders Achievement Award," presented by the
Toronto Friends of the Visual Art and the 2003 "Award of
Distinction," from the Toronto International Art Fair.
In 2007, she was named a Life Member of Art Metropole,
Toronto In 2009 she received an Award of Distinction
from the Faculty of Fine Arts at Concordia University,
Montreal. In 2012 she received the Queen Elizabeth
ll Diamond Jubilee Medal. (2019)
Mandy Kerlann
née Harmunderjit Kaur Brar. Born 1959 India. She arrived to live
on the west coast of Canada with her family when she was
9 years old and adopted the name Mandy. She excelled in
studying sciences at the University of British Columbia.
Long fascinated with France and things French she and
her husband Hervé now live with their two children in a
castle in France. She enjoys working with fine textiles
embroidering bed, table and bath linens out of company
workshop near Beaune, France where she and her staff
prepare custom works. Some of her works have been
featured in Architecture Digest and have been showcased
in centres such as New York City. Her clientele includes
the Royal family of Jordan, supermodels and wealthy
entrepreneurs around the globe.
Source: Dream (job) weaver by Peter O’Neil, Ottawa
Citizen Saturday June 7, 2008 pg. B8
Suzy Lake
Born June 24, 1947 Detroit, Michigan.
Suzy studied fine arts at Wayne State University in
Detroit and Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo,
Michigan, U.S.A. in the 1960's and became involved in
the anti-war and civil rights movements.. She was in
Detroit during the Race riots of 1967 which rocked the
city to the core. After graduating she immigrated to
Canada with her husband to escape the draft for the war
in Viet Nam. She would return to university graduating
from Concordia in Montreal with a Master's Degree in
1980. Suzy is best known for using a range of media from
costumes, self portrait photographs, video and
performance exploring identity, beauty, gender and
aging. From 1969 through 1978 she taught at the Montreal
Museum School. She was co-founder with twelve colleagues
in the Véhicule Art Inc. In 2014 her works were shown
for a year at the Art Gallery of Ontario. In 2016 she
received the Scotiabank Photography Award which led to
additions shows in Toronto. It was in 2016 that Suzy won
the Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts.
Her works have also been showed across North America and
Europe. (2019)
Monique Martin
SEE - Academics and Librarians -Educators
Shani Mootoo
SEE - Writers - Authors
Joyce Wieland
Born June 30, 1931, Toronto,
Ontario. Died June 27, 1998, Toronto, Ontario. This
artist had her 1st exhibition in 1960. She went to New York City in 1962 for
nine years with her husband, Michael Snow, and experimented with films. She
took her inspiration from Canadian history, politics, and ecology. Her
artistic works covered a multitude of media from canvas, quilting, and
embroidery to film. Her works came in all sizes from large murals to a
commissioned Canada Post World Health postage stamp in issued in 1972.
While she exhibited her works all over the world
in 1971 she became the 1st living Canadian woman artist to have a solo
exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada.
In 1982 she was inducted into the Order of Canada.In the spring of 1987 the Art Gallery of Ontario mounted a major
travelling exhibit of Joyce's works which was its 1st retrospective of a
living Canadian woman.That fall she received a Visual Arts
Award from Toronto Arts Foundation.In 1987 a documentary about
Joyce, Artist on Fire. was released.
(2020)
Jin-Me Yoon
Born 1960 South Korea. She immigrated with her family to
Canada in 1968. Jin-Me earned her Bachelor of Arts from the University of
British Columbia in 1985 and went on to earn a Bachelor of Fine Arts from
Emily Carr College of Art, Vancouver, British Columbia. In 1992 she earned a
Master's in Fine Art from Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec. She
teaches Contemporary Art at Simon Fraser University's School for
Contemporary Arts. Jin-Me works in mixed media incorporating photography,
video and performance in her efforts. She has gained international
recognition with her work having been shown across Canada, Europe, Korea,
China, and New Zealand. (2019)
In 1941 she was an army
Lieutenant Nursing Sister serving in the European theatre of World War II.
She joined the Red Cross Arts and Crafts League after the war and engaged in
pottery and weaving while she worked at the P. E. I. Hospital.
Source: Outstanding women of Prince Edward Island
Compiled by the Zonta Club of Charlottetown, 1981. (2020)
arranged
marriage. In 1950 she tested positive with tuberculosis and was sent to
hospital in Quebec City for 3 years leaving her baby to be adopted by a
neighbouring family. While away from her home she learned to make dolls and
do beadwork crafts. In 1960 the family moved to Kinngait (Cape Dorset)
Several of her children died from disease including 3 daughters, and four
sons. Kenojuak became on of the 1st Inuit woman in Cape Dorset to begin
drawing. She also created many carvings from soapstone. In 1963 she was the
subject of a documentary film from the National Film Board. The money earned
from the film allowed the family to purchase a canoe to help Johnniebo
provide for his family by hunting. In 1967 she was inducted as a Member into
the Order of Canada and in 1982 was promoted to Companion. . After her
husband's death she married Etyguyakuua Pee (d 1977) and in 1978 she married
Joanassie Igiu. She is best known 
Born
1925 Kangirterjuak Camp, Northwest Territories. Died December 9, 2018
Pangnirtung, Northwest Territories. As a child Elisapee and her family
lived the traditional nomadic life of the Inuit peoples living off the
land. She would use the memories of her traditional life in her art work
as an adult. Settling in her 40's in Pangnirtug she worked in print and
tapestry workshops for over 40 years. Many of her oil stick works show
family members in traditional life activities. Her later works reflect
concern for suicide crisis of youth today and concerns for effects of
climate change on the life in the far north. She is a strong
believer that art can help to bridge the generation gap for people of
the far north. Her works have long been included in exhibitions across
Canada and samples of her works are included in numerous public and
private collections. In 2010 she appeared in the film Inuit Knowledge
and Climate Change. This was the 1st Inuklitut language film to address
global warming. 
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Died
October 28, 1875 Halifax, Nova Scotia. Maria received training in
art from an American artist and and English artist who were providing
art lessons in Halifax. A woman of talent and determination she used her
artistic abilities to open schools in Halifax to teach the young refined
women the fine art of drawing. Combining her interest in flora and fauna
with her drawing she published 146 paintings of Nova Scotia wildflowers
in 1840. Wild Flowers of North America
was published in 1867. Her works were widely accepted with and exposition
at the 1867 Paris exhibition. 
working
career in 1964 as a legal secretary in Edmonton, Alberta and
Toronto, Ontario. For a time she ran the Ininew Native Friendship Centre in
Cochrane, Ontario which been established as a safe place for Aboriginal
peoples but sadly had become more of a crisis intervention centre. This
experience moved Maxine on a path towards community engagement and healing.
the
University of Illinois in Urbana. She became fascinated with the human
anatomy. In 1903 she entered the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in
Illinois to study clay modeling. Here she studied under Frances Loring
(1887-1968). Florence would become partners with Frances Loring setting in
1909 in New York City and in Toronto, Ontario in 1913.
In 1920, Loring and Wyle moved into an old abandoned church.
This location became their home and their studio. It also became a gathering
place for Toronto's artistic community and the headquarters of the
Sculptors' Society of Canada (SSC). She
was a co-founder member of the Sculptor's Society of Canada in 1928.
She was the 1st woman sculptor to become a full member
of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. Her work was often
exhibited by the Women's Art Association of Canada. She worked on numerous
Canadian War Memorials for WW 1. Much of her work was cast in Bronze,
but she also carved stone, marble and wood. in 1953 she was a
recipient of the Queen Elizabeth ll Coronation Medal. She had a love of
nature that was reflected in her two volumes of published poems.
In 2000 the Canadian Portrait
Academy made Wyle an Honorary Academician naming her one of the Top 100
Artists of the 20th Century.
(2019)