Artist Judith Saunders
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Seen here about to work on one of five large new paintings, each about 30 by 40 inches, Saunders explains that “it took me years to learn how to mix colour,” adding that “my early work was darker. I don’t know why.”
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Judith Saunders has had a love affair with nature for as long as she can remember. “Trees are sacred to me and connect us with the spirit of the earth and the spirit of life," she confesses in her online autobiography. Perhaps that’s the touch of Maliseet blood coming forth, perhaps it’s the love of nature instilled by her father when she was growing up in Carleton County.
After a successful career in nursing (she trained at Woodstock’s Carleton Memorial Hospital and at St. Michael’s in Toronto), she abruptly left the profession to pursue her first love, painting. Now she spends winters in Victoria, B.C. (where she received a Bachelor of Fine Arts at U/Vic) and returns to New Brunswick every summer to paint. Much of her work is held in private collections in North America, Europe, Australia and the Caribbean.
After a successful career in nursing (she trained at Woodstock’s Carleton Memorial Hospital and at St. Michael’s in Toronto), she abruptly left the profession to pursue her first love, painting. Now she spends winters in Victoria, B.C. (where she received a Bachelor of Fine Arts at U/Vic) and returns to New Brunswick every summer to paint. Much of her work is held in private collections in North America, Europe, Australia and the Caribbean.
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Clockwise from top left: Three small works
set near the Coldstream farm where Saunders
grew up; a study for a larger work which
doubles as a self-portrait here. All
four images demonstrate the artist’s love
of “Big Sky”.
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Judy, most artists can only dream of making a living from their art but you have achieved that. It couldn’t have been easy.
You can make a living as a painter but it’s very hard work. Well before I decided to paint full time, there were many art courses and many nights spent painting after work. For years in the 1970s and 80s I had to “paint to sell” ─ lots of houses and portraits. So far, I’ve had 44 solo shows, 88 group shows. I teach on cruise ships and I do art rentals in Victoria. I belong to a lot of groups, which you have to in order to get your work out there. I’ve been very fortunate but I’ve worked hard and long.
You’re known for your landscapes. Old growth when you paint out west, lakes and forests when you’re down east. Trees galore.
Dad made me conscious of that. He had a 500-acre woodlot and he loved his trees. He was always very conservation-minded and that impressed me. “Manage a forest properly and you can harvest it for all of your life,” he used to say. Let’s not cut it all down.
Your latest project has been a five-year odyssey that you call the Chiputneticook Lakes Series.
I painted very hard this winter and now have 30 paintings of all the lakes around here ─ North Lake, Eel Lake, Mud Lake, Spednic Lake … and I’ve been at East Grand Lake for 40 years. There’s so much history here. This chain is a heritage waterway. For the Maliseet, Mi'kmaq, Passamaquoddy, and Penobscot First Nations, it was the big water highway leading from the St. John River to St.Croix, Maine. I’ve always wanted to do a series that might make people more aware. Make them take a second look at what we have that’s disappearing very fast.
Will you be showing these?
I plan to keep all the originals. A Quebec City firm is making giclée (a very high resolution printing method) prints on canvas. The plan now is to travel with the giclée show and lecture. I’ll talk about each painting, talk about the lakes themselves.
You don’t strike me as someone who rests on their laurels. What’s next on the painting front?
When this is done, I’ll go really big ─ 4 by 5 feet. I like to paint big.
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This double-canvas East Grand Lake scene started off as just the single painting at right. “We’ve been here for forty years,” Saunders says with affection. “The lake itself was created by a glacier that came down from Quebec.”
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