Marie-Anne Erki

In this portrait, Elsie-Mae radiates peaceful and unselfconscious vibes, as she stands alone in the hush of the forest. I based my painting on a photograph taken by my friend, Kristin Hulme of Kingston, who generously allowed me to use it for my work. Elsie-Mae was on a walk with her mother and Kris through Lemoine’s Point in Kingston, Ontario, on a crisp autumn afternoon. She is about to shrug off her hat and coat, totally unconcerned about the cold air around her. Here, as in most of my work, I purposely use vivid, supersaturated colours to set the entire image apart from the blurry memories of the fleeting moments that I want to convey. Elsie-Mae has since grown up quite a bit since that magical afternoon, but I still see in her the other-worldliness that she radiated then in her red duffel coat.

Subject: Elsie-Mae

A child in the forest 2022, oil on canvas, 18” x 24”

Growing up in Montreal, I had two major influences in art, my mother, a pastel and oil painter, who studied with Jacques de Tonnancour, and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) program for young people, created by Arthur Lismer and still overseen by him when I was enrolled in it. I spent some of the best Saturdays of my young life at the MMFA school. This was the genesis of my life-long love for painting. My facility in drawing led me initially to architecture, but I pursued instead a career in structural engineering. I retired early to painting full-time. In my paintings of children, personable dogs, and people, enjoying each other’s company or in settings of sunny summer days at the cottage, I want to give the viewer a reprieve from the jarring headlines of the day. I want to capture in my work those tranquil, transient moments that can be our bulwark against the grittiness of world events.