Doris McCarthy 1910-2010

Doris McCarthy

When I was in Can Serrat in Spain, I learned that my old friend, Doris McCarthy died on November 25th at the age of 100. She was an icon in the Canadian art world, honoured and loved for her constant, dedicated focus on painting the landscape of this country that she loved so much.

In 2005, in honour of her 95th birthday, Toronto's acclaimed Amadeus Choir, paid tribute Doris McCarthy in a special multi-media concert - "Amadeus and the Artist - A Portrait of Doris McCarthy" - on October 22 at Yorkminster Park Baptist Church in Toronto. The program featured the world première performance by the Amadeus Choir and the Bach Children's Chorus of 'Salutation of the Dawn' by Canadian composer Eleanor Daley, commissioned by the Amadeus Choir.

Along with three of her friends, I was invited to give a speech about my travels with her. Here's the speech I gave that day.

"It’s not the journey you take with Doris; the adventure is being with her and feeling the largeness of her spirit. Doris has an infectious joy in greeting each new day. She silently whistles as she prepares her art supplies to head outdoors, forever hopeful that TODAY will produce the best painting ever.

In 1993 we shared a magical sailing trip down the east coast of the Queen Charlotte Islands, stopping at the abandoned Haida villages, where Emily Carr once painted. On every shore excursion, Doris, then 83, jumped out of the dinghy, set up her equipment and began painting with that determined focus we all admire.

She is a delightful blend of dedicated focus and joyful playfulness. When a couple of us picked up a 10’ long tube of seaweed and began to twirl it like a skipping rope, who should jump into the rope and begin skipping, but young Doris McCarthy.

Doris has such a positive way of being in this world. When I complained on the sailboat of feeling very claustrophobic in my small upper bunk with 6” of air space, Doris jumped up into it and said, “I’ll take it, I don’t mind it a bit.”

My most memorable adventure was our trip to Pond Inlet in 1992, in the dark of Arctic winter. The adventure began before we even arrived there. Between flights on our way to Pond, we took a short walk to stretch our legs. Suddenly we heard our airplane engines revving up. OH NO! All our stuff was on that plane..purses, cameras, even our airline tickets! Everything. We ran onto the tarmac in front of the plane, madly waving our arms and screaming Stop! Stop! Mercifully, the propellers stopped, and the stairs were lowered. As we climbed onto the plane, a small Inuit man, one of the ground crew said sternly to Doris, “Grandma, don’t ever do that again!”

Doris’s attitude toward life continues to inspire me in my life. She is my hero, the kind of person I want to be when I’m 95. She lives in a small body, but her spirit fills this room. I am privileged to know you Doris."

Liminal Time

The word liminal comes from the Latin, limen meaning threshold. an in-between place, a place of transition, a time of waiting and not knowing. Dawn and dusk are considered liminal places. Crepuscular animals, like foxes and coyotes are most active at this time of day, a time that is considered a magical time in Celtic spirituality and to Indigenous people which is perhaps the origin of their designation as tricksters. As I write this, the northern hemisphere has just passed the vernal equinox, where day and night are of equal length.We are in a liminal space between winter and spring right now, unsure if we will have one more storm or snowfall before spring finally settles in. We're also in a liminal place as we live through this pandemic with the anxiety and discomfort of not knowing. A time of great transition for the entire world, wondering what we've learned from this and what lessons we'll carry forward. Author and Fr...

Lessons that Stone Walls Teach

Dry stone wall in the Burren, Co. Clare, Ireland I've just returned from teaching a Workshop in Wild Places class in the Burren in County Clare, Ireland. Writing this post, I'm reminded of another post I wrote after visiting Inishmaan, the middle of the Aran Islands off the west coast of Ireland several years ago. Stone walls crisscrossed the island in tight webs like a fisherman's net. I wrote then that the web of stone walls made me think of the idea of putting limitations on our painting as a way of exploring more deeply and how walls give limits against the limitless. You can read that article here. As our group hiked in the Burren with our guide, Marie McGauran we learned that the walls are stronger because of the holes in them. The wind can pass through. The oldest stone walls, estimated to be 3500 years old are at Skara Brae, a Neolithic site in Orkney. Most walls were built in the 18th and 19th century, marking areas of private ownership and resultin...

Am I Too Old to Change? Embracing Life

Photo by Miguel Á. Padriñán from Pexels I'm in the process, at last, of working on the book that came to me in a dream seven years ago. It has circled my head all these years, demanding I get at it. It's called: We're Not Done Yet: Coming to Art Later in Life . It has actually hung in the air a couple of feet behind my head, attached by a string like a helium balloon, like a cartoon cloud, waiting for me to get to it. Some of you will know of it because I posted a request on Facebook in 2019 asking for artists who have come to art later in life to reply to me if they'd like to answer a questionnaire. I received 168 responses plus earlier interviews I did before the put out the questionnaire. There was some overlap, and some didn't respond after they'd offered to. All in all, I received 128 responses. By a huge majority it was women who responded to my questionnaire. By the time we get into our 60's we bring a rich life experience to our work: m...

Janice Mason Steeves

Search This Blog