As temperatures climbed into the mid 30s celsius last summer, the artist knelt at the sidewalk of her south ward neighbourhood with a bucket of chalk beside her. Within a few minutes, to the delight of neighbourhood children, the image of a smiling polar bear emerging from arctic waters appeared on the bare concrete, a figure of reassuring coolness in the sweltering relentless heat.
"The rains washed it away after a while," laughs Wendy McDougall of her informal sidewalk art. "Now, the snows do the same thing!"
Though her seasonal chalk works are soon reduced to memory or photographic archive, McDougall's medium of choice for her formal art is ironically one of the most permanent in visual art: watercolour. The living room walls of the south Marks Street home the artist shares with her spouse are full of watercolours that grab the eye and hold it in wonder. In large part, these and the dozens of works on her website reflect her own delight in the versatility and the challenge of the medium. McDougall's initial choice of watercolour, however, was dictated by necessity:
"Our first daughter was badly allergic to solvents and of course oil paints are full of them: we couldn't have them in the house," McDougall explains. "I wouldn't have done watercolour, but now I wouldn't do anything else--it's too much fun!"
For the Ottawa-born artist and teacher, the fun part of watercolour has to achieved through a large application of perseverance:
"Watercolour can be so frustrating if you didn't learn why it works the way it does," McDougall says with a thoughtful intensity. "The way the colours go together, how they work with the paper, what happens to them as they dry--in the classes I've taught at the Thunder Bay Art Gallery, I've always said that the bravest people in the world are those who come back for the second lesson!"
To illustrate some of the medium's complexity, she gestures toward a painting of a Candy Mountain scene executed in soft pastels.
"I took a pale wash of the three primaries--yellow, red, blue--one at a time and let them wash over the surface of the paper in different ways and different times," McDougall explains. "See the dimples on the paper? Each time a colour wash went over, some of it would collect on this side or that of the surface. It took 40 layers of colour, but now the painting changes as the light changes, picking up the different hues of colour as the day goes by."
The artist indicates another painting, with burgeoning swirls of cloud-like shapes on a deep blue background:
"I paint a lot outdoors, even in winter, and the temperatures play a part in the mix, too," she says. "With this one, Time Equals Space, I laid the paper down on the snow as I worked, and the water in the paint froze. Look at the way the colours worked here!"
The art of watercolour is more than an exercise in fun for McDougall, however: it is also a tool.
"It's not a matter of identity for me, it's like a filter, maybe," she muses, running her hand through a head of hair closely cropped as a result of a recent round of chemotherapy. "If you want to understand the world, you can't do it with words alone. Visuals do what words can't handle. Though my works are rooted in reality, they are just my way of understanding the world."
McDougall's deep desire to understand reflects a university degree in philosophy, English, and psychology earned years ago, but her first reaction to the vistas of the northwest was one of purely visceral joy.
Having fallen in love with a Thunder Bay area man while at university in Toronto, McDougall drove to the northwest with him as he returned to take up employment. As many a northwesterner has done for someone from away, Norman McDougall gave the gift of the region's beauty to his bride. During the nighttime trip along highway 17, he pulled the van off the road toward a lookout he knew of overlooking Batchawana Bay.
"We saw the dawn come up from high on the bluff, the water a Tom Thomson blue," McDougall remembers as vividly as though the experience came but moments past. "I had never seen anything like that without the tang of salt water in the air, and I have loved the uniqueness of this area from that time on!"
Now, after 32 years of marriage and with two grown daughters, her husband is the subject of one of her painstakingly executed portraits, which take months to complete from the germ of the idea to the final product. Hard at work transferring paintings to her website, and slowly gearing up for a show in Grand Marais at the Johnson Heritage Post this summer and TBAG in December, McDougall reflects on her art:
"The way the paint works, it's like gambling," she says. "Frustrating, but every now and again, the paint will do something that you couldn't have done yourself, and it's so delightful!"
Wendy McDougall's works can be viewed on www.wendymcdougall.com. A high speed modem or connection is recommended . Other works can be seen at the Framing and Art Centre, McIntyre Plaza; Thunder Bay Art Gallery Rental Program, and Serendipity Gardens Cafe and Gallery in Rossport.