When Titia Jetten introduced Sheila Norgate at a recent panel discussion in Ladysmith, Titia quoted Sheila from her website on the subject of risk. [Photo of Heart Tamer at Work by Sheila Norgate]

People often ask me questions like how did I become an artist, and when did I first know I was one, and how long did it take to paint that piece there, and do I work every day, and do I ever feel like quitting, and do I ever feel like never quitting.

These questions are fairly easy to answer.

The tougher ones live in the suburbs of reason. Ones like why does an artist answer the call, and who exactly is calling, and why would anyone give up things like fiscal certainty to make marks, and who exactly makes the marks.

All I can say is that it has something to do with risk, and how at some point for me, the risk of flying without a net finally became smaller than the risk of never having flown at all.

The theme of the panel discussion was “Creativity & Commerce: Strange Bedfellows” put on by the Ladysmith Waterfront Gallery. The location was Aggie Hall in Ladysmith as there was damage to the art gallery during the December 20th windstorm. I was drawn to the subject as it also affects writers and I expect I’ll muse more about that in my next blog.

Nixie Barton and Grant Leier were the other two visual artists who were part of the panel. In her introduction, Titia pointed out that Grant gets up at 5 a.m. and paints 72 to 80 hours a week.

I first met Sheila in Toronto some time in the nineties when she was selling her art on Pride Day, perhaps along Church Street with other vendors. Soon after moving to Nanaimo in 2005, Sarah and went to Gabriola Island for the Thanksgiving weekend artists’ studio tour and met up with Sheila again in her studio. I’ve been glad to see evidence of her continuing art practice and her performances of one-woman shows in various locations ever since.

As for Grant and Nixie, I first met them at their Yellow Point “farm” when the book Goody Niosi wrote about them was being launched: The Romance Continues: The Art and Gardens of Grant Leier and Nixie Barton (Touchwood Editions, 2005).

Titia posed the question to the three panel members: “I’m eighteen and I want to start a career in art, what would you advise”

“Go to your studio,” Sheila said. She worked a part time job two days a week for twenty years as a way to pay the rent.

In the notes Sheila had written and gave me following the panel, she wrote: “The impulse to make art that came over me in the early 1980s, had nothing to with money. The calling was pure, and loud, and flooded with uncontaminated devotion. I lived in Victoria in a one-room apartment over a barbershop. I slept in one corner and made art everywhere else. I would ride my bicycle down to the causeway in front of the Empress Hotel to flog my original watercolour cards at $3.00 a piece. On a good day, I might bring home $20.00.”

“You can make it work,” Grant said. He and Nixie had jobs at first, to supplement their income. Grant said he’s a huge proponent of art colleges. He finds the learning of technical skills a huge asset.

At the Alberta College of Art he met other people like him which he found to be another advantage. [Photo of Grant Leier in his Nanaimo studio by Robert Amos]

Sheila spoke about having a body of work with a voice and the only way you get that is to go to your studio or room. Having distinctive voices is what has helped all three of them she said. And what a delight it is to know these three artists and see their art in the world.

Titia asked the three artists about starting an art business. I realize that the “commerce” angle took over the discussion which is very different than facing the blank canvas in a room on one’s own.

All three artists have had or still have (in the case of Grant and Nixie), representation elsewhere, that is, beyond Vancouver Island. The internet though, means artists don’t have to visit galleries with portfolios in hand; they can send jpegs of images to galleries far beyond home.

Grant praised Sheila’s website. He’s not one to spend much time promoting his work that way. He does find that Facebook works for promoting a show but tried Instagram for a week and didn’t like regularly posting images of his work.

Titia mentioned hearing what others have to say and asked, how do you hold on to your voice?

Sheila said she made peace between identity, self-esteem and success. She did a lot of work to unlock her creative voice from money. In her notes, she wrote: “If we haven’t teased apart our money issues from our identity, then we’re going to have a tough time keeping our art practice free from the lust of result.”

Work with the studio door closed for that first audience, ourselves, she said.

Ten years after the watercolour card sales in Victoria, Sheila was at “the height” of her career. “My work was hanging in a posse of North American galleries and I was making a very good living. Except that the more money I made, the more money I seemed to need.”

Grant loves painting and the sale of work motivates him. He told a story about Nixie getting tired of painting flowers but then a single, recent sale through Canada House was of flowers. The question is, will that sale motivate her to paint more flowers? [Photo of Pink and Black by Nixie Barton]

In an interview with Robert Amos in the Times Colonist (December 31, 2017), Grant said: “A lot of people were asking: ‘Why are you painting the same things?’ ” Grant told [Robert Amos]. “It’s because I know them and I have a history with them and I love them and they have been successful before, so I know that I can recreate them in a better way that I am more excited about and they are going to be even more successful, I hope. Actually, I’ve introduced new elements, the ornamentation is more intricate and they are evolving that way.” [Photo of Tulip Koi by Grant Leier]

Sheila pointed out that Grant is a man and it’s a different world for women. In a recent Visual Arts Newsletter from OPUS, there’s an illustration of a book for sale: A Big Important Art Book Now with Women! by Danielle Krysa. It may be tongue in cheek but it illustrates the state of affairs for women in the arts.

The 2008 recession hit the art world hard which affected them all. Sheila wrote in her notes: Over the next number of years I steadily lost not only a good deal of my income, but the lion’s share of my confidence. My self-esteem was going under with the fiscal ship and taking my creative voice with it, and at the centre of this machinery, was the issue of money. Somewhere along the line, the money I garnered in exchange for my art, had turned into the evidence that I was worthy and valuable. And when the source of money started to dry up, it eroded my entire sense of self. I flailed around for a while like a bug on its back trying desperately to right myself. I changed what I painted. I worked in smaller and smaller formats. I built a beautiful new studio.

The galleries that represented me were trying to right themselves as well. Some of them never did, and closed down permanently. Others sheepishly suggested which colours and subjects might be more saleable and emailed me jpegs of old paintings of mine that had sold, hoping that I might be encouraged to paint them again.

But in all this difficulty, something miraculous started to happen.

Contemporary theologian Richard Rohr said that: “Grace cannot be held to any patterns of buying, losing, earning, or achieving. Quite simply, to experience grace you must stop all counting!”

A few years ago on the May long weekend opening of the Gabriola Saturday market, I set up my usual booth. Excited and enthused about the new artwork I had done just for this occasion, I could hardly wait for the starting bell to sound.

I had a marvelous day. I talked to countless people who stopped by my stall. I saw old friends I hadn’t seen in months. I talked to a young artist who was in need of some mentoring. The sun was shining. Someone brought me a chocolate panini. I sold one $5.00 card.

On the way home, Richard Rohr’s words about grace came to me, and for the first time, I refused to count. I refused to allow the figure of $5.00 determine whether or not I had had a marvelous day. I refused to let $5.00 stand between me and all the richness that had visited me.

Sheila is no longer represented by any galleries and finds the freedom this affords her “dizzying. “I am creating new paintings that I adore. And I am sharpening my voice in writing and performing the work of my life. I still make only a fraction of pre-recession wages, but I no longer take it personally, or as evidence of my worth. I have finally unhooked the cart of commerce from out in front of the horse of my creativity. I can feel the same purity and devotion that I experienced in the 1980s when I was just starting out when it wasn’t about the money . . . and it was all about love.”

You can see Sheila Norgate’s available art on her website at www.sheilanorgate.com and do sign up for her newsletter so you’ll hear about new art when it becomes available and other events where Sheila will be selling her art and/or performing her stories from life.

Nixie Barton and Grant Leier are represented by Gallery Merrick in Nanaimo as well as Canada House in Banff and West End Gallery in Victoria. [Photo of Nixie Barton in her Nanaimo studio by Robert Amos]