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By Steve Hubrecht
By day most kids in the Columbia Valley know Louise Wright as a school library technician extraordinaire, organizing poet-tea parties, creating library displays, matching students with books they are bound to love, and in general doing everything she can to make literacy and reading more fun.
But by night, when the displays are all cleaned up, books are on the shelves, and the library door shut, ‘Miss Louise’ (as Wright is known in local schools) heads home, picks up her paintbrushes or her camera and begins to create.
Miss Louise is an accomplished artist and photographer, and this fall has been a busy one: in September she launched her first book ‘A Columbia Welcome: A Community Photography Collection’ and throughout October her art is being featured as part of the ‘Celebrate Nature’ exhibit in Pynelogs Cultural Centre.
‘Celebrate Nature’ also includes the work of four other local artists (Rita Rankin, Christine Foran, Mara Pratt, and Beth Gallup), who all focus on the natural surroundings of the Columbia Valley. Miss Louise’s paintings are mostly acrylic, with some oil and mixed media work.
The first thing you notice about her work is the vibrant colour, especially her wildflower paintings. Purple fireweed, deep pink (almost red) tulips, brighter pink and blue snapdragons, and a piece titled ‘Bright Garden’ that is a riot of summer colours.
You also can’t miss the gently swirling brushstrokes when she paints mountains and rocks, with the lines of light grey, dark grey, brown, black, rusty orange and other earth tones seeming like the geologic striations and rock layers that created those mountains and rocks in the first place. There are outdoor recreation-focused paintings too, with a skier riding through backcountry snow, and a cyclist pedalling through a streaky sunset.
When the Pioneer visited the exhibit on Friday, Oct. 18, gallery volunteer Lori Baugh Littlejohns said visitors had seemed to gravitate to two of Miss Louise’s work in particular: the flower-filled ‘Bright Garden’ and the aquamarine waters in ‘Welsh Lakes’. “It’s the bright colours, I think people like that,” said Baugh Littlejohns.
It’s no surprise Miss Louise centres so much on nature; she grew up in the Columbia Valley in a family that was always outdoors. “My parents really embraced it (being outdoors). Camping, snowmobiling, going up logging roads deep in the Purcells that hardly anyone else goes to; as kids we did it all,” she told the Pioneer.
When she grew up, she made sure she and her husband did the same with their own kids. “I dragged them out all the time. We always did at least one really big overnight backpacking trip as a family every year,” explained Miss Louise. They went all over: Paria Canyon in Arizona, the rugged North Coast Trail on Vancouver Island, and deep into secret spots in the local East Kootenay backcountry.
“My kids used to refer to it as the annual ‘death march’, but now that they are adults, they still make sure to come home for it each year,” said Miss Louise. “We love it . . . it’s hard to explain other than to say I always feel really good to be in the backcountry.”
All that time in nature is the inspiration for Miss Louise’s art and photography. While in the backcountry she’s constantly taking photos, and some of those photos become the basis of her paintings.
“The painting is a sort of appreciation for what I encountered out there that day,” explained Miss Louise.
When it comes to painting, she is mostly self-taught. Indeed, when she tried taking online art classes through Emily Carr University of Art and Design a few years ago, she found that “when I was forced to paint what someone else wanted me to paint, how they wanted me to paint it, it really killed the joy for me. I actually didn’t pick up a paint brush for a few years after that.”
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Miss Louise started into photography in a similar fashion, beginning by taking photos of dance groups, soccer teams and other community groups as a hobby, before becoming more serious.
That focus on people as well as landscapes is still evident in her photography, making ‘A Columbia Welcome: A Community Photography Collection’ different than other coffee table photography books. Yes, there’s amazing mountain and lake landscape images in the book, which is organized into sections based on seasons. But there are also photos of farmers’ markets; the annual Show and Shine classic car show in Radium; the Canal Days festival; the Fairmont Fly-In, the Great Scarecrow Competition in Invermere, and more.
Miss Louise chalks this up to the wide array of people living here, and all the different things they do.
“I was thinking that a day doesn’t go by when a person can’t help but notice something impressive about where we live. Creating a book and spending time daily looking at the valley was a beautiful way to put those difficult, busy days into perspective,” she said.
Miss Louise self-published her book, which she admitted was a challenging process and took longer than expected. But there are now several hundred copies here in the Columbia Valley, available for sale at Four Points Books in Invermere, Bacchus Books in Golden, and at the upcoming pre-Christmas Holly Jolly Market at the Columbia Valley Centre in December.
The ‘Celebrate Nature’ art show at Pynelogs will run until Thursday, October 31.
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