Maureen Joyce discovered painting when she was looking for a pathway to rediscover joy.
“It was my journey with cancer,” Joyce said.
Restricted by her cancer treatment, she told herself to look for something that would bring back the joy of living. That led her to take her first sketching class.
“I love to be creative,” she said, something she had expressed through gardening and sewing. “I just felt there was inside me that creativity that wanted to come out. It gives me such peace and joy!”
That first art class in Bradford with well-known watercolorist Donnah Cameron was very much an adventure into new territory.
“I didn’t know the terminology. It was like a different land,” said Joyce. “Perspective? Cobalt Blue? Magenta?”
It was a challenge, but she also found that “when you get together in a group, it’s all like minds ... you speak the same language.”
In that class, she met Kathryn Bury, Deb Tucker and Stella Wadsworth. The four became friends and collaborators – a friendship that planted the seeds of an arts movement in Bradford that became the BWG Studio Art tour. It's now been rebranded as the BWG PASSION MADE Artisan Tour.
It was over coffee, after class, that Bury once wondered, “What do we do with these art pieces?”
Joyce remembers Wadsworth’s reply: “Maybe we should show our art in Bradford.”
The friends held a group show at the Bradford library, then located on Holland Court, where they were dubbed Bradford’s Group of Four. That show was followed by Art in the Barn, held at Wadsworth’s barn studio on Morris Road.
The exhibits stirred a lot of public interest in their watercolours and sketches and attracted notice of other local artists, who got in touch, and asked to be included.
“And from that, the studio tour evolved,” Joyce said. “It was so exciting… It opened the doors for me. I met a whole new group of friends, organizations, the town.”
It was Joyce and Wadsworth who made the studio tour their “baby,” working with the town and the South Simcoe Arts Council to create the self-directed tour showcasing the range of the arts in Bradford West Gwillimbury.
Joyce is a member of the Society of York Region Artists, the South Simcoe Arts Council, and Artists at the Gibson. Over the years, she has participated in other art exhibits, where her works have won prizes and recognition.
“I had no intention of being so ‘out there’ and entering shows and such,” Joyce said.
She works primarily in her home studio, in both watercolour and acrylic, often using photos of local scenes, flowers and family as the inspiration for her work.
And she still has her very first painting — a watercolour of flowers.
“When I’m feeling discouraged and thinking ‘You haven’t gone very far’, then I pull it out,” Joyce said. “I don’t think you ever master the craft; I certainly have improved.”
Her florals have evolved from the “flat” detail of that first painting to an expression of emotion and movement.
“I make a conscious effort to have the petals ‘dancing’,” said Joyce. “You’re dealing with a flat surface. How do you make that come alive?”
There’s no one artist that has been an inspiration for her work, Joyce said, but she does have a special memory of an icon of the Canadian art world.
When she was working at the McMichael Canadian Collection art gallery in Kleinburg, she met and worked with Group of Seven artist A.J. Casson.
“His work is amazing,” Joyce said. “His use of greens, how he captures the light – he’s amazing.”
It has all been part of a journey, both artistically and personally.
“The art has taught me to look at colours and shadows and shapes,” Joyce said. “I look at things through a different eye than I did originally.”
It’s an eye for joy. “Am I in it for the love, or in it for the money? I’m in it for the love,” she said.
Joyce will once again be part of Art in the Barn on the BWG PASSION MADE artisan tour, displaying her works with fellow artists Stella Wadsworth, Kathy Bury and Angie Horsley, Sept. 21 and 22.
