(A watercolour of the Sparks House by local artist Perpetua Quigley creates a visual story with her Haiku. The house is located on Castlefrank Road and is now the location of ‘The Spa’.)
Perpetua Quigley grew up in St. John’s, Newfoundland where she learned the Zen of walking, from home to school and back, in city parks and along the shores. She studied sketching during her college years. Getting married and leaving her beloved Newfoundland for a new life, she entered university taking courses in photography at the University of Calgary and Ottawa University. Upon graduation, she worked for 28 years in the Ottawa not for profit sector and raised two children while living in Kanata.
As an empty nester and in retirement, Perpetua renewed her studies in photography and watercolours. She is also a volunteer for the National Gallery of Canada in their school outreach for art education program. As an emerging artist, Perpetua tells us, “I use various themes of nature, architecture and artifacts to develop a series and create a visual story”. Photography’s realism informs her sketches which she considers to be more expressive-realism.
Drawn to light and shadow, Perpetua’s subjects are based on photographs from her walkabouts. The sketches are accompanied by haiku with 3 lines of 5, 7, 5 syllables. Perpetua says of her Haiku as it connects with her art, “Haiku is traditionally associated with nature and helps me capture the essence of the moment along with my photography. My objective is to master techniques in watercolour sketching of community living.”
Perpetua is introducing a series of locally captured features of our community that we will be sharing with Stittsville residents. Perpetua shares, “these sketches are part of my journey in developing my technique in watercolour painting. I look forward to exploring and sharing visual stories about Stittsville’s heritage and community”.
Perpetua has also self-published photobooks with haiku entitled, Ephemeral Art of Trees; Ephemeral Art of Sailing; and, Baby Beauties (of animal babies). You can view her photographs, sketches and watercolours on her Instagram page.