BIOGRAPHY
Born Elizabeth Duckworth in 1949, I grew up in Willowdale, a suburb of Toronto, close to where my mother had also spent her childhood. Stories she told about life in what was then the rural outskirts of the city had a strong influence on attitudes about the land and the devastating effects of urban encroachment. By the time I was born, the places where my mother had played baseball in open fields, and had campfires with her friends, were covered with streets of small brick bungalows. My favorite places were those which retained some feeling of countryside - mostly the parks and ravines along small tributaries of the Don River.
However, my father had grown up in "Cabbagetown", an inner city neighbourhood which had once been home to many immigrants who grew vegetable gardens in their front yards - a practice sniffed at by the Protestant native Torontonians. He fell asleep at night to the sound of lions roaring in Riverdale Zoo.In my imagination, the city became an exotic place. My feelings about the city are an equal blend of awestruck tourist and defensive native. And I feel that both city and country are legitimate environments - I don't follow the country good-city evil paradigm.
A compulsive drawer, I covered school notebooks with pictures, mostly of horses. From 1964 to 1969, I attended Earl Haig Secondary School where there was a good art program. I was accepted into Central Technical School art program at the age of seventeen, but my parents talked me out of going. At that time, a graduate of a vocational school was not qualified to attend university. The following year I applied to Ontario College of Art and was accepted on condition that I pass grade twelve. I failed chemistry and was therefore refused. I returned to high school to complete grade thirteen and applied again to OCA, but was refused again.
During that final year in high school I met and became engaged to Dan Schamehorn of Washago, a boy I met during the summer at my parents' cottage. We were married after the last year of high school and I moved out of the city to the town of Orillia. I spent the next twenty-six years raising three children, getting a B.A. part time, working ten years as an English instructor at Georgian College , and painting sporadically. In 1995 I applied again to Ontario College of Art and Design (as it was now called) and this time was accepted, with advanced standing, into second year.
Thirty years after first applying to OCAD, I graduated with honours, majoring in drawing and painting. The next year, I took a fifth year with OCAD in Florence, Italy, earning an Advanced Visual Studies Certificate. The experience of art school and especially of Florence have had a profound influence. Having got into the habit of painting outdoors while in Florence I have reconciled myself to the fact that the land has the strongest pull for painting.
Other than my childhood, and Florence, teachers have been my strongest influences. These include Carol Bobb of Earl Haig S. S., Michal Manson of Wilfrid Laurier University, Arthur Shillng (nationally known artist from Mnjikaning First Nations, near Orillia), and many teachers at OCAD including the following: Victor Tinkl, John Scott, Greg Murphy, Greg Damery, Richard Robertson, Sylvia Whitton, Jim Tyley, Michelle White, Arturo Nagel; also Peter Porcal and Richard Serrin of Florence.