Collected
I’ve started collecting paintings and objects from second hand stores, garage sales, and rummage sales. I see my collecting as a temporary waystation for handmade and artist-made items that have lost their original context but not their meaning. These objects—wooden toys, pottery, paintings, and artifacts—are held for a time, appreciated for their care and intention, and then allowed to continue on to new homes.
Each piece is part of an ongoing story. My role is not to collect permanently, but to witness, preserve, and pass along.
Alice N. Waldron
Painted on the same day in 1974, these two works by Alice N. Waldron feel less like standalone pieces and more like pages from a personal record.
H. Belley
I don’t know exactly where this landscape was painted, only that it’s signed H. Belley. A small cabin sits beneath towering rock faces, held in place by paint and memory. I came across it by chance, and kept it because it feels rooted—made by someone who spent time looking.
H. Clayton
I don’t know much about this painting beyond a signature: H. Clayton. There’s no date, no title—just a small structure at the edge of a clearing, carefully painted and left behind.
Violet Rycroft
I don’t know much about Violet Rycroft beyond what’s written on the painting itself. Signed and dated 2000, this small oil landscape feels like part of a quiet, ongoing relationship with place—one that didn’t need an audience to exist.
V. Hopkins
A small acrylic painting signed “V. Hopkins ’82” carries a careful record on its reverse: a farm home’s location, its original builder, and a brief note of where he went after. A Farm Home preserves a place and a life through the quiet authority of handwritten memory.
Margaret Mann-Butuk
Painted in 1966 by Margaret Mann-Butuk, Light for the Valleys captures the quiet scale and shifting light of the prairie landscape she returned to again and again. Found decades later at a church rummage sale, the painting carries both a documented exhibition history and a deeply personal connection to place.
Bernice Trider
I’m drawn to this small painting because it feels quietly certain of itself. Old Home was painted in 1980 by Bernice Trider, an artist deeply rooted in Alberta’s Peace Country. It’s modest in scale, carefully made, and clearly loved—one of those works that carries a lifetime of looking, returning, and remembering. Finding it felt less like a discovery and more like being trusted with something that mattered.
Gladys Ada (Thompson) Steeves
Painted in 1984, My Nova Scotia Home feels like a letter to a place. Gladys Ada Steeves names the location, the date, and the memory directly on the canvas, anchoring the work in a lived relationship with Central Caribou, Nova Scotia.