It was strange that the first and only specially built, specially lighted studio I ever owned should have been a torment for me to work in. Through the studio only could you enter my four-room flat. A tap at the door-I was caught there at my easel; I felt exposed and embarrassed as if I had been discovered in my bathtub! It was a curious agony.
Possibly it was the ridicule my work had been subject to in Victoria which made me foolishly supersensitive. Even at Art School I had preferred to work in a corner, back to the wall, so that people could not look over my shoulder. In this house, if a tenant found me at my easel, I felt as though I had been cornered committing a crime. Even while landladying, Art would keep poking me from unexpected places. Art being so much greater than ourselves, it will not give up once it has taken hold.
Victoria had been very stern about my art. Being conservative in her tastes, she hated my particular kind, she believed in having well-beaten tracks and in sticking to them.
The house was fuelling. A huge Negro came to me protesting, “Dat monk in de basement slam de winder ev’time de sacks come fo’ to empty. What us do?”
I went below, moved the monkey, left Negro and monkey making friends.
By and by the man came up for me to sign his book. He stood at the studio door.
“Gee! I’s envy yous.”
“Because I have a monkey?”
“Because you’s kin paint. Seem dat what I want all de life of me.”
Later that week I was suddenly aware of two men’s faces peering through my studio window. Screening hands framed their stare.
In a fury I bounced out the door on to the little balcony where the men stood.
“How dare you stare into my window? Don’t you know a person’s home is private? Go away.”
The men fell back. Then I saw that one was my baker. The other man was a stranger.
“Pardon, Miss. We didn’t mean to be rude–this ‘ere feller,” thumbing towards the stranger, “loves pictures. Come along, I sez, I’ll show you!”
I was shamed. Humble people, here in my own town, wanted to see and know about Art. They might not like my special kind? What matter? They were interested in pictures.
In Victoria I had only come up against my own class. The art society, called “Island Arts and Crafts,” were the exponents of Art on Vancouver Island, an extremely exclusive set. They liked what they liked–would tolerate no innovations. My change in thought and expression had angered them into fierce denouncement. To expose a thing deeper than its skin surface was to them an indecency.
They ridiculed my striving for bigness, depth. The Club held exhibitions, affairs of tinkling teacups, tinkling conversation and little tinkling landscapes weakly executed in water colours. None except their own class went to these exhibitions. A baker, a coal-carrier! Good gracious! Ordinary people would never dream of straying into an “Arts and Crafts” exhibition, would have been made to feel awkward had they done so.
An idea popped into my head. I would give an exhibition for ordinary people, invite the general public, but not invite the Arts and Crafts. I would invite the people who walked in Beacon Hill on Saturday afternoon and on Sunday. My house was practically in Beacon Hill Park. Lower East had just fallen vacant. Lower West was going to be empty next week.
I had a carpenter cut me a connecting door. This gave me six large, well-lighted rooms. I invited three other artists to show with me, one a portrait painter, one a lady just returned from England where she had been painting English cottage scenes, the third a flower painter. In one room I would hang my Indian canvases. Examples of my new and disliked work I would hang in the kitchens.
At the last moment the flower painter, finding that the show was not to be sponsored by the Arts and Crafts, did not show. As I read her curt, last-minute withdrawal, a young Chinese came to my door carrying a roll of paintings. He had heard about the exhibition, had come to show his work to me–beautiful water colours done in Oriental style.
He was very anxious to carry his work further. He had asked admittance to the Arts and Crafts Sketching Class, and had been curtly refused because of his nationality. I invited him to show in place of the flower painter and he hung a beautiful exhibit.
The exhibition was a varied show and so successful that a few of us got together, working on the idea of starting a People’s Art Gallery in these six rooms of mine. It was winter time, there were no Band Concerts in the Park. People walked until they were tired, then went home chilled. To drop in, sit by an open fire, warm, rest themselves and look at pictures, might appeal to the public. It was also suggested that there might be study classes. Young people came to see me saying how ardently they hoped the idea would be carried out.
We elected temporary officers and called a meeting of important people who could help if they would–the Lieutenant Governor, Mayor, Superintendent of Parks, a number of wealthy people with influence. We called the meeting while the exhibition was still on the walls. The rooms were thronged; there was interest; the plan was discussed. I offered Lower East and Lower West to the City at the lowest possible rental, offering also to shoulder a large proportion of the work connected with the hanging of new shows from time to time.
My friend Eric Brown, of the Canadian National Gallery at Ottawa, was enthusiastic over my plan and promised to send exhibitions out from Ottawa. But influential Victorians were uninterested, apathetic. Why, they asked, was it not sponsored by the Arts and Crafts Society? Vancouver had just built herself a fine Art Gallery. It was endowed. Unless Victoria could do something bigger and more flamboyant than Vancouver she would do nothing at all.
The Lieutenant Governor said that if the City would acquire a property and erect a fireproof building, he would be willing to lend two small etchings, very fine etchings–but he would not lend to be shown in any ordinary building.
Victoria’s smart set said Beacon Hill was out of the way.
We replied, “It is handy for those who walk in the Park. You others have your cars.”
The Mayor said, “The City has provided artificial lakes, a very fine pair of swans, innumerable ducks, a peacock and a Polar bear. What more could the public desire!”
The people’s gallery did not materialize. The everyday public were disappointed. The wealthy closed their lips and their purses. The Arts and Crafts Society smiled a high-nosed superior smile. Lee Nam, the Chinese artist, many boys and girls and young artists were keenly disappointed.
I closed the connecting door between the suites and again rented Lower East and Lower West as dwellings.
The wise, painted eagles on my attic ceiling brooded–sorry for my disappointment. The Indians would say, “They made strong talk for me.” Anyway they sent me down to the studio to forget my disappointment and to paint earnestly.
Eric Brown wrote, “I am sorry the people’s gallery did not go through.” He spoke kindly about my own work. I was now an invited contributor to art shows in the East. Sympathetic criticisms were unnumbing me; I desired to paint again. “After all,” wrote Mr. Brown, “the people’s gallery might have further crippled your own work. Victoria just is not art minded. Go ahead, paint, don’t give way to discouragement. Paint, paint!”
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