A finger on the pulse of the arts in OOE

OOE ARTIST FEATURE: ARCHITECT ELAINE DECOURSEY CELEBRATES VIBRANT COLOURS AS PAINTER, URBAN SKETCHER, AND GARDENER

Longtime resident and artist Elaine DeCoursey will display her work in A Walk of Art, Old Ottawa East (OOE)’s outdoor art tour this September 20th (rain date 21st). “I’ve attended the tour several times and I’m very pleased to be able to participate this year,” DeCoursey says.

Originally from Saskatchewan, DeCoursey studied architecture at the University of British Colombia. She practised as an architect for 10 years in Saskatchewan and Ottawa, then became a project manager and conservation architect for the federal government, a career she pursued for the next 25 years. “I am proud of the work I did on the Carleton University Art Gallery as the project architect,” she says. “As a project manager and conservation architect I also worked on several heritage buildings downtown including the former Bank of Montreal building, the former train station, the West Block, and the Museum of Nature.”

DeCoursey has lived in the neighbourhood with her husband Murray Gallant for 35 years, starting out in a small bungalow on Elliot Avenue, then moving closer to Hopewell Avenue Public School for their two daughters in 1999.

“My mom was a painter, but I always thought it was ‘her thing,’” she says. “I painted with my daughters when they were young and found it so much fun that I began painting for myself in my 40s.” She has since painted series on wildflowers, musicians, coffee shops, Lansdowne and its farmers market, and flower bouquets. She is currently working on a series on the Main Farmers Market.

DeCoursey has moved from watercolours, to acrylics, and, more recently, to oils. “I keep coming back to flowers because of their colour, vibrancy, and diversity. I’m an avid gardener. I’ve painted and drawn flowers for years but have recently come to appreciate wildflowers. They are so important for sustaining our natural environment. Native flowers tend to be small; I paint them larger than actual size to feature their structures, colours, and patterns. My paintings focus on abstracting these characteristics in a lively way. As a trained architect, drawing has always been very important to me, so my marks – the ink lines I use in my paintings – are personal and expressive.”

She is also an urban sketcher. She has a myriad of travel journals bursting with notes and drawings of places she wants to remember. She and her husband have travelled to Southeast Asia, Japan, Hong Kong, Sicily, Florence, Rome, England, France, New Zealand, Mexico, and more. “I draw street scenes with restaurants and people. I take the time to draw what I see, but I don’t always paint on site. I draw minimally, to get a feel for the scenes, then I add more detail during the painting phase.” The artist first uses water-colour pencil to capture the shapes of her subjects. Then she uses waterproof ink to start the drawings. Finally, she uses water-colour paints and more ink, sometimes referring to photographs she has taken of the scene.

“My mom has been a huge inspiration to me. She did paintings in Saskatchewan of festivals, markets, and people.” DeCoursey hopes to someday publish small booklets from her journals’ best entries/drawings to feature the places she has visited.

During COVID, DeCoursey started painting streetscapes. “I find it challenging and interesting to capture the character of a street and its buildings. I have recently begun painting in parks, too.”

In addition to exhibiting her work on Merritt Avenue at A Walk of Art, DeCoursey will participate in a plein-air exhibition in September organized by the Manotick Art Association. In January, she will attend a mixed-media painting workshop in Mexico. To see more of DeCoursey’s work, visit her website at http://www.elainedecoursey.ca. or on Instagram at Elaine decoursey.

Author Tanis Browning-Shelp (http://www.browning-shelp.com) pens her Maryn O’Brien Young Adult Fiction series, published by Dog-Eared Books, from her home in Old Ottawa East.

Contact tanis@browning-shelp.com if you have information about artists or art events that you believe would enrich our community members’ lives.