Sunshine Coast painter EA (Elizabeth) Evans never realized she had any special aptitude for art until one day when she was 19 years old and just out of high school. Evans had drawn some cartoon characters to amuse two children she was babysitting. Then the kids’ mother saw what she had done.
“She said, ‘These are really good,’” Evans recalled, sitting recently in her studio at her Gibsons home. “Then the mother said, “Have you decided what you’re going to do? You should go to art school here in Montreal. Arthur Lismer’s there.’”
Evans said she just thought, “Big deal. Who’s he?”
Lismer, of course, was a member of the acclaimed Group of Seven, and Evans would soon learn what a big deal he was. She took a clutch of her drawings – including those cartoons – to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, where she was accepted as a student on the spot. Evans spent the next three years studying painting, drawing, sculpture, etching and design under Lismer’s tutelage.
The Group of Seven influence is apparent in much of Evans’ work, although she has explored a wide range of styles over the last 50 years, and many of her works show no vestige of the Canadian impressionists’ unique stylings.
Now, in what’s billed as a “first and only retrospective exhibition,” you can take in a selection of Evans’ work spanning the period from 1968 to 2018. It will be held at One Flower One Leaf Gallery’s Sunnycrest Mall location from Oct. 12 to 28, with a champagne gala reception at 7 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 12.
Evans has painted everything from conventional canvasses to a very successful set of UNICEF greeting cards to murals (such as the one outside Zócalo clothing store in Gibsons), and even surfboards.
“They are all different series. I like to do maybe 10 works for each series, and then I’ve exhausted that,” Evans said.
One Flower One Leaf owner Shinyu Unopia has long been a fan and seller of Evans’ oeuvre. “The themes and approach may vary, but the common thread in all her work is uncomplicated serenity,” Unopia said. “A gentle and playful stylizing of reality and nature, this is her signature.”
Evans admits it’s been “overwhelming” to sort through hundreds of pieces among five decades of work, about half of which has been created since she, her husband, William Baker, and three daughters moved to the West Coast in 1994. “When you dig through everything, you think, ‘Oh my God, this is my life,’” Evans said.
Someday, there will be even more to sort through, because Evans is still painting almost every day. Her latest series is strikingly different and more abstract than other recent work. It features dominating pools of vivid colour, with just a hint of landscape.
“It’s like a golden shore,” she said of one piece in the new series. “I love the feeling of this. I use these big fat brushes. I get such a freedom of movement in doing it.”
The Oct. 12 reception at One Flower One Leaf will include free prints for the first 100 guests, plus a silent auction for a finely rendered Evans painting of a raccoon hugging a tree branch. Proceeds from the auction will go to the Gibsons Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre.
