The Drama of Elisabethan Art
by Sally Hansen
Elisabeth Thomson sees the world differently. She observes with an eye for drama. When she looks at the outline of a tree against the sky, she sees bold shapes and angular outlines. Despite her name, her art reflects a much greater influence by the Surrealists than by the Renaissance Masters of the Elizabethan era. She paints stark, dynamic images using vibrant colours, frequently choosing blues and reds.
Thomson is creative, artistically fearless and utterly undeterred by well-meaning gallery owners who advise her to “pick a style and stick to it.” Instead, the best word to describe her artistic style is eclectic. Some of her canvases evoke images of landscapes by The Group of Seven; some are highly geometrical; others are semi-abstract. Like Salvador Dali, she is completely comfortable letting her subconscious guide her as she reconstructs images that appear in her dreams. Unlike Dali, she is gifted with a gentler, more recognizable world in which to dream.
Raised in Ottawa, Thomson began studying art at the age of fourteen when she entered the four-year art course at the High School of Commerce. She remembers it as a marvelous experience, more like a junior college than a high school, offering her welcome freedom to explore her artistic interests. She remains grateful to her parents for their encouragement and support. By the age of nineteen, Elisabeth was selling pencil portraits on commission while managing a small art gallery in Hull, Quebec. She continued her artistic training, taking various fine and commercial arts courses at Algonquin College, the Ottawa School of Art, and the Haliburton School of Fine Arts. She also earned a B.A. in English Literature from Trent University.
Thomson’s paintings are eclectic because she is interested in everything. In her twenties she signed up for an $80 bus trip from Ottawa to Vancouver that allowed her to stop wherever she wanted. She grabbed her camera and set off to see the wide world of Canada. When she finally reached the West Coast, she met a fellow artist who suggested that she try supply teaching. At that time all you needed was a B.A. She found that she really enjoyed kids, and her flair for drama enabled her to establish an easy rapport with them.
Once she returned home she completed a Bachelor of Education from the University of Ottawa. Today she divides her time between painting in her studio in Fitzroy Harbour, a small village on the Ottawa River between Constance Bay and Arnprior, and teaching at an elementary school in Ottawa.
“My mother always thought I should be an actress,” Elisabeth confides. She has just told me about the plays she has written, directed and produced as part of her classroom activities as a teacher of second-graders. Teaching provides yet another outlet for her limitless creative energies. Rather than search for educational products on the Web, she prefers to invent a new game or write a play that captures the specific interests, needs and abilities of her individual students.
Four years ago Elisabeth moved to Fitzroy Harbour with her wonderfully supportive husband John, who channels his parallel creative energies into making music when he is not working as a professional development instructor to other educators. Three years ago Elisabeth took a half-time leave from her teaching responsibilities to devote more time to painting. The move to Fitzroy has been inspiring. “I love it here. The hiking and cross-country skiing opportunities are amazing. Outdoors is where I develop most of my artistic and my classroom ideas. I love the peace; I find Arnprior busy in comparison,” she laughs.
Another setting that inspires and informs Thomson’s art is the family cottage at Little Hawk Lake in the Haliburton Highlands, south of Algonquin Park. She is a prolific artist, seeing paintings everywhere she looks, filling multiple sketchbooks with designs rendered in pen because she prefers a medium that is bold and immediate, not tentative. “I love edges and lines, the juxtaposition of positive and negative. My father was a cartographer — perhaps that influenced me.” A large part of her enjoyment is in the initial design of each potential canvas. When she returns to her sketchbooks she finds herself drawn more and more frequently to the angular, the stark, the dramatic.
She also is a writer, filling journals as well as sketchbooks, and she fully expects to write a book some day. My guess is that Elisabeth empathizes with Pogo when Walt Kelly famously had him say: “We are confronted with insurmountable opportunities.” It will be interesting to watch where Elisabeth’s ongoing exploration of her multifaceted interests and talents takes her. Combined with her abundance of creative and physical energies, and her willingness to explore the subconscious, the sky is not the limit.
To get a good look at her journey so far, her website is an excellent place to start. She is planning a spring show, and details will be posted on her website. She also has works on exhibit at The Gallery Gift Shop at 158 John St. North in Arnprior (623-7399).
To arrange a visit to Carp River Studio at her home at 102 Old Ship Rd. in Fitzroy Harbour, you can contact her at 623-8474 or by email. For a novel gift idea for Valentine’s Day, take a look at her unique offer to “funkify” a portrait. Working from a photo, Elisabeth will create a funky, Cubistic portrait of your significant other, you, or up to three people. Just click on “Funkify Your Portrait” on her website to see examples of this novel gift of original art. She welcomes commissions for work based on special interests as well.