You may already be familiar with Evelyn Campbell’s art and not even be aware. A wildlife mural Campbell completed 17 years ago hangs at the Battlefords River Valley Visitor Centre, a selection of paintings are on display at Jeanine’s Coiffures at the Discovery Co-op mall and there’s even still a painting on the gate of her former house on 94th Street.
Campbell recalls the exact year she first took up painting: 1987. She took a class held in the instructor’s basement in Battleford after her friend suggested they give it a try. Campbell was hooked. She attended these art lessons for two years. Eventually, she heard about the Battlefords Art Club. At the time, the club met once a week at Saskatchewan Hospital and before long they moved to their current home in the Don Ross craft room.
Campbell has been a member of the close-knit group for more than 20 years and still attends every Tuesday, going as early as 9 a.m. some weeks with a packed lunch in hand, ready to spend the day painting with friends.
It wasn’t just Campbell’s love of painting that’s kept her interest in the club over the years; it was the sense of community.
“They’re all such a congenial group to be with,” Campbell says as she flips through a binder with newspaper clippings and photos of group members inside. “We’re all friends, we’re like a family.”
Over the 30 years Campbell has painted, she says the main difference is that she’s gone from doing “portraits [and] animals” to experimental painting on different types of materials and even learning how to do pyrography — wood burning.
Campbell’s home is full of her creative projects, including the throw pillows on which she painted peacocks and the sheer shower curtain she painted a seascape onto. The hall closet, storage area, bedroom cupboard and even some of her floor space are now devoted to her paintings and supplies and on her walls hang paintings done with acrylics and oils, depicting landscapes and wildlife. The shed just behind her home is painted on all sides with different scenic murals.
The subjects of Campbell’s art are varied, from exotic animals to the homestead her father built for his parents just north of Lloydminster to the scene of a French street taken from a piece of wallpaper. Anything can find itself a subject of Campbell’s art. As she tells it, “I [paint] anything. There’s nothing special.”
After retiring from the Department of Natural Resources in 1989, Campbell kept busy with painting, as well as volunteering and singing. With Campbell’s home like a gallery for her own pieces, painting initially takes the spotlight, though she will tell you art is only one of her hobbies.
In fact, before she ever held a paintbrush, Campbell was spending her free time singing in choirs, in church and out, around Battleford, North Battleford and St. Albert, Alta. Currently she performs at the Third Avenue Church and with the Hillcrest Singers.
As with the community Campbell found through painting, she was also drawn to choir singing because of the people.
“With the church and the choir, there again, you’re like a family,” she says.
While away living in Alberta for a few years, Campbell kept up with both singing and painting, though she found the experience to be different than home.
“In [St. Albert] it was more about critiquing your work,” Campbell says. She wouldn’t say she preferred the more familial feeling of home, though, and instead came to appreciate the environment for helping her grow and improve.
“I enjoyed it because I got used to how they did things and I accepted it. You have to look at it that way so it doesn’t bother you,” Campbell says.
Back in North Battleford now, the camaraderie of singing in choirs is still one of the draws for Campbell. Asked what her favourite part of performing is now, she mentions her fellow choir members.
“It’s just such a pleasure to sing [together],” Campbell says. And she doesn’t take being able to sing for granted, noting, “for 80, I’m lucky I have my voice still, I think, to sing soprano.”
In addition to the two choirs she sings with three days a week, Campbell also joined in the Candlelight Processional this past winter and, she says, “I’ve already signed up for the next one.”
Along with singing with a choir, a project indicative of Campbell’s collaborative spirit came about just over 10 years ago in 2005 while she was living in Lloydminster. Campbell had heard about a project started by St. Albert-based artist Louis Lavoie in honour of Alberta and Saskatchewan’s centennial. The mosaic mural titled Buffalo Twins hangs at the Vic Juba Theatre in Lloydminster and consists of 336 panels that make up a larger image.
“I was just lucky,” explains Campbell. “I went and I said ‘would I be allowed to do one’ and they said sure, so I did. Two of the squares are mine. I say mine, but it’s also theirs.”
The two panels Campbell completed for the project were both chosen to be part of the mosaic. Campbell says she felt “so fortunate to be involved in” the project, but what was even more surprising was watching TV one day and seeing Queen Elizabeth II next to the mural during the centennial celebrations.
“Now I can say the Queen saw my work!” Campbell jokes.
Having her work selected for the mural is one of the highlights of her painting career, but Campbell hasn’t slowed down in the 12 years since.
Along with the Tuesday art club session, Campbell says she paints during the evening whenever she feels like. Though it’s the weekly meetings where she can get suggestions on her work or even offers some advice.
“We help each other,” Campbell says. “Somebody will see what I can do to change mine and I might see what they could do.
“And all you do is make a suggestion, take it or leave it, so no one gets hurt by it.”
Part of that comfort is due to the amount of time they club has been together, Campbell says.
“Because I grew up here and been here for so many years now, you know everybody.”
Over the years Campbell has been involved in other hobbies and organizations in multiple towns, but it’s been those that have been welcoming, gracious and “like a big family” that have had the greatest impact on her.
Painting and singing are Campbell’s passion, but it is with other local painters and singers around her that elevate a pastime activity to a collaborative community experience.
