Nattalia Lea - Artist Statement

 
 

Acrylic Painting , Canmore,AB

My kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Baird, made me feel special when she helped me create an indented rim around my clay ashtray.  The other kids all had plain rims.  But I grew up in a time when I was the only non-white kid in class, the smallest and by far, the shyest.  In grade one, I added clothes to my stick men drawings.  By grade five, one of my crayon and water colour paintings, a made up street scene, was shown at a children’s art show in the Vancouver Art Gallery.  My grade five art teacher, Miss Mould, drooled over my creations, praising me for my brilliance.

An artist lived across the alley from where our house was.   When he learned I liked to draw, he invited me to sit in his garden to draw the flowers in his garden.  He even gave me some pastels to try out.   That summer was short lived.   After his passing, his late wife was in too much grief to watch me draw.  I stopped.   In grade 12, I graduated with the high school Art Award, nominated by Mr. Spence, who believed that I had the most talent to succeed as a real artist.

I did not go to the Vancouver School of Art.  Born into a working class family with a single mother of four, the main bread winner, my head prevailed over my heart.  Against all odds,

I became the first woman to graduate with a bio-resources engineering degree from the University of British Columbia in 1978.  During my undergraduate studies, I took all the fine arts courses I could take that non-fine arts students were allowed to take.  Ranjan Sen, a talented artist pushed out of box thinking to the limits, lamenting that passion was not enough to succeed.  Discipline was mandatory.   

With zeal, I tackled life drawing classes, both formally and informally.  My best art student friend, Willa Lee Downing, was by my side.  (Like me, she would also become a professional artist).  Tuesday evenings were spent in the Chinatown studio of now world-reclaim artist, Raymond Chow.  While peers drank beer and partied, I drew and painted every day, for at least an hour.  Art was my salvation.  Before I left Vancouver in 1979 to pursue an engineering career, my art was shown and sold in juried art shows run by the Federation of Canadian Artists.  But the honour I am indebted for, is having my art shown at a rigorous art show at the historic Klee Wyck Gallery in West Vancouver.  There were over 300 submissions.  Only 60 paintings were accepted.  One of them was mine.

 One of the first things I did when I arrived in Calgary, was to join the Federation of Canadian Artists and to find out where life drawing classes were offered.  To my delight, the late Liz Allan, a prominent Calgary artist and printmaker, led Tuesday evening life drawing classes in the basement of the Memorial Park Library.  This ritual went on for many years.  My art continued to be shown at Calgary juried art shows in the Muttart Public Art Gallery and in 1984, I held my first Calgary one person art show at the Devonian Gallery.

 My thirst to create and study art did not stop at life drawing and acrylic on canvas.  Over the years, I have studied cartooning, watercolours and animation.  Some years I’ve hunkered down to drawing and colouring within the lines, on the subject of many Calgary historic houses.  I’ve deviated in creating a world about a rat named Joe and his many animal friends.  Some say I’m spontaneous or on a whim, will turn a blank canvas into a nonsensical scene about falling in love or falling down a hole beneath the earth’s surface.

 Perfectionism has persuaded me to labour over my canvas for longer than average paint times.  Usually, takes me at least a year to finish a painting.  The process in creating also involves a process of strategizing which colours will be chosen and which layering process will be applied, so the brilliance of the subject matter radiates from within.  Word of mouth, has been the means by which art collectors hear about me and typically, like what they see.

 After motherhood, career and divorce, self-discovery and re-inventing myself from engineer, journalist and author back to engineer and then into filmmaking, I’ve finally settled in to what I always brings me joy – art.  There’s something magical when the brush sweeps across the canvas.  There’s so many ways this can be done.  That magic is what I hope to share with the world, that joy which lifts one’s soul and spirit.