Orphaned Objects
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.
Odell Bennett
A painting of the Dutch Creek hoodoos in British Columbia, signed Odell Bennett. After admiring it for three years in a Kimberley antique shop, I finally brought home this colourful depiction of a place that has held a special place in my family's history for more than 45 years.
Ferdinand Friedl
A quiet prairie barn, painted in Edmonton in 1971 and sold through a local art shop. This small work by Ferdinand Friedl is less about nostalgia than it is about presence — a record of how art circulated, what it depicted, and how everyday landscapes were once brought home and lived with.
B. Long
A winding path, a quiet cabin, and trees glowing at the edge of winter—signed B. Long, and painted with a calm, deliberate attention that rewards time spent looking.
Stanley C. Riviere
A winding road, autumn light, and a paper trail that refuses to disappear. This 1951 exhibition painting by Stanley C. Riviere reminds us that mid-century Canada quietly celebrated everyday creativity — and that those stories are still worth holding onto.
Lorne Presniak
A signed landscape by Lorne Presniak, depicting a rural creek, ducks, and autumn trees. A quietly composed scene preserved without formal record beyond the name on the canvas.
E. Hogg
Signed E. Hogg and otherwise undocumented, this modest landscape captures a place known through daily life. A fragment of regional painting history that survives without a name attached to it.
D.A. McCullagh
Working life, rendered quietly in paint.
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.
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.
E. MacLeod
A small, unsigned-in-every-way-but-name landscape by E. MacLeod. A lake, distant hills, and a restrained palette that rewards slow looking.
Hazel Miller Church
A winter sugar shack, a thawing stream, and a painter whose story survives only through the work itself. Sugar Shack is a reminder that not all meaningful art leaves a paper trail.
C.A. Elkow
Painted after a 19th-century lithograph, this mid-century winter scene reflects how images lived on through practice, not preservation.
Augustine C. Frey
A signed and dated winter landscape by Augustine C. Frey, painted in Josephburg—but imagining mountains far beyond it. A reminder that landscapes often map memory, not geography.
H.D. Carrigan
This is another artwork I found at a thrift store last month. I love it, but I can’t find any information about the artist (signature looks like H.D. Carrigan?). Depicts a street scene of an active alleyway, with the Hotel MacDonald (Edmonton) in background. I love the popcorn vendor!
Father Paul-Emile Côté
Found this beautiful landscape by Father Paul-Emile Côté (1913-2014), Canadian artist. Did some research and his medium was shoe polish! His palette included 90 different colors of shoe polish and cream from 20 different brands.