Holiday-makers wave to friends from a cruise ship’s deck. A father and his two daughters gaze longingly at playground equipment. Gulls swoop joyfully over a sandcastle. These are a few of the scenes White Rock artist Elizabeth Hollick painted in preparation for her October 2021 show at the Landmark Pop-Up Gallery.
A closer look at each canvas reveals that everything is not quite as it seems. The cruise ship is an under-construction apartment building. The decks are concrete slabs; the railings are plywood and two-by-four safety fences.
The playground the little girls are eyeing is another construction site. Steel-braced forms, webbed rebar towers, and giant wooden spools of electrical conduit are the enticements to play.
The sandcastle, over which the gulls are swooping, is another high-rise in the making. A woman stands on the balcony of a nearby building, enjoying her sea view that may soon be obliterated by the new tower.
While some residents of White Rock scowl at the many signs reading, Caution: Construction Ahead, Elizabeth finds the rising towers inspiring. She often takes her sketch pad and chair to a building site to record the scene, or more comfortably, parks her van nearby.
“I like seeing buildings before they are finished,” she says. “During construction, I can see all the little bits going on inside. Each floor is at a different stage of completion.”
She enjoys the challenge of getting details correct, like the way the rebar is bent and tied together with cross pieces. If she didn’t get it just right, she’s confident that someone would pronounce the building incapable of standing.
The people she includes in her paintings are often relatives, friends or pedestrians who pass by the construction site while she is sketching. Passersby don’t give her enough time to draw them, so she may snap a photograph to be consulted later in her studio.
Being an artist was not the pathway Elizabeth’s family expected her to follow when she was growing up during the post-war years in London, England.
“I took a secretarial course, but shorthand wasn’t my strong point. I’d sometimes guess at words,” Elizabeth chuckles, “and that wasn’t the way to impress the boss.”
While she earned money at various secretarial jobs, art had been calling her since school days. Her elementary school teacher required students to keep a journal. Elizabeth filled hers with drawings.
As a young adult, she inquired about taking night classes at the Croydon College of Art, located not too far from her home in South London. The principal suggested she attend full time, so she did.
“I immediately felt at home,” says Elizabeth. “We were required to go into the city for full days of sketching. What could be more pleasant than spending a day with like-minded pals?”
Besides life drawing and painting, Elizabeth studied pottery and sculpture. The latter led to a sudden change in direction. “My father called my modern sculptures junk,” she says, “which led to an explosion of minds.” As a result, Elizabeth hopped on a bus and went to join the navy. While serving for two years, she designed posters for special events and backdrops for theatre productions.
After marriage, she moved with her family to Canada. Her husband was supportive of her efforts, and she found time to paint while her three daughters were at school.
Besides the large canvases Elizabeth creates using acrylics, she is well-known for her murals. “That began after I served as a facilitator for a BC Festival of the Arts workshop in Grand Forks,” she says. “Everyone was challenged to do something in their community to promote the arts. I decided to paint a mural in White Rock.”
She approached the owner of The Pirate Restaurant on Marine Drive. He agreed to let her paint a mural on the side of his building if she included him in the picture. Other residents and business owners admired the mural and invited her to paint for them.
From that beginning, Elizabeth’s work has appeared on many buildings in Vancouver and White Rock. Some murals resulted when she was approached by a company charged with cleaning graffiti off buildings. It was found that graffiti artists were less likely to tag buildings if the walls were decorated with lively scenes.
One of Elizabeth’s larger murals is a nine by eighteen metre scene entitled “The Wonderful Year We Fell in Love” on the side of White Rock’s Playhouse Theatre. She consulted black and white photos from the theatre’s archive so she could include a host of locally known actors and directors in the scene. In the bottom right corner, her grandson peeks from behind the curtain.
To paint such a large mural, she drew the design on paper, divided it into squares, then painted each square larger on the brick wall. The project took three months of work on sturdy scaffolding covered by a tarpaulin to shield her from the sun. Today, one can enjoy a tour of White Rock by strolling past her numerous murals.
Elizabeth volunteers at the theatre, painting backdrops for productions. She enjoys working with other artists, carpenters, and prop women. They trade stories and have fun putting together everything that’s needed for a successful production.
“I want people to enjoy my work,” says Elizabeth. “So many people, especially adults, just walk past something like a building site. They don’t really see it. I hope my work will inspire them to take notice of their surroundings, and perhaps see them in a different way.”
Gazing at the people lining The Friend Ship’s railing on Elizabeth’s canvas, one cannot help but be amused. The bright colours and smiling faces are a true reflection of the artist’s own personality.
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