‘Painting teaches you to see’: Elora resident embraces challenge, change at Elora Plein Air Festival

ELORA – Judy French warmed her greys with brown and black, cooled them with blue, noting where the shadows fell on the face of the Henderson Street home of the late Beverley Cairns.

French wore a faded, red jacket splotched with dried black paint, a gift from her mother some 40 years ago.

French once raced sled dogs wearing it, she said.

“You can’t dress up for this; I have paint on my pants too.”

French studied the scene from under her Tilley hat, a thin brush suspended between her fingers for a beat.

“Normally I wouldn’t take on a subject as difficult as this, but the various roof lines and the interesting view really caught my eye,” French said.

Since 2016, the Elora Plein Air Festival has drawn artists from across Canada each May for a weekend competition and sale.

An Elora resident of 20 years, French, 74, has participated since its inception, except the two years she spent caring for her late husband, Richard Martin.

“It’s sort of a struggle and you pop upon a scene that you really like that speaks to you, you want to get the image down … and if you’re successful it’s the most heady thing,” French said.

French took third last year, and a $300 prize, for a painting she created from the Elora foot bridge facing the village.

French likes the challenge of working outdoors with shifts in the environment; weather and insects, and intentional constraints like “quick paints” or nocturnes.

“Sitting at home, what else would I do? I don’t knit. I don’t play golf. I like to paint.

I like the people I meet. I like the things I see when I’m painting,” French said.

She’s part of an older cohort at the festival, she said, one in need of younger talent.

“Like everything else, most groups are full of seniors now, and the seniors are getting older and become ill or dying; so we need replacements to come up,” she said.

French said she has painted the Elora Mill many times, before its “grandiose” transformation. Templin Gardens and Wilson Flats are also popular subjects.

The sun peeked out here and there on May 15; tiny bugs flitted about getting stuck in the oily colours; and passersby stopped to glimpse the developing scene.

French said the idea is to simplify as much as possible — “we’re editing the scene all the time” — but the details in Friday’s painting had taken over.

“Buildings have to look a certain way, or they’re not going to ‘read,’” French said. “The architecture is tricky; I want to get it proper, otherwise it’ll really annoy me.”

Her artwork began with a pen sketch in a picture diary, where French jots down the date, weather and remarks.

On the 8x10 canvas, she divides the scene in thirds and sketches the structural lines. Working in oils, she paints back to front, finishing in the foreground.

“I’m going to cover up a lot of the structure with the leaves that you can see just coming out now … that will soften some of the edges and make it not so in your face,” she said.

“Painting teaches you to see really well.”