Splash Artist Jamie Evrard on Italy, Pretty Art, and the Circus

Summer Love, 2017, Oil on canvas, 48 x 48 in

I just like to be outside my element. I like to do things, to take chances. I guess that's why I like to travel and be in places where I don't speak the language, and why I like to climb up a silk and see if I can do some trick. It’s why I like to go out to my studio and see how a painting will turn out.

If you ever meet Jamie Evrard, don’t say her floral paintings are pretty. If you must comment on them, choose a more visceral adjective: lively, powerful, even beautiful will do.

On a Thursday afternoon, just 12 hours before she’s headed to the airport, Evrard calls me to talk about her Splash donation. At 68, the Milwaukee native seems fearless as we navigate several streams of conversation. She shares her opinions with energy and jests brightly about her life and experiences.

“I don’t like pretty,” she tells me. “Flowers are so pretty and people say, ‘Oh you’re a floral painter, your paintings are so pretty.’ And I hate that because I don’t want them to be pretty, I want them to be strong and work as abstractions and I just use the flowers as an excuse.”

An excuse, she says, for their vibrancy, colour, and complexity. Where one might see flowers as just pretty objects, Evrard sees something more abstract. While she sometimes works with a physical flower or bouquet, she’ll put them away once she really gets into a piece.

When I’m working on something, I often turn the canvas upside down and work on it that way. You just see the marks and the shapes and the colours, you don’t see six flowers in a row. And then when you turn it right-side-up again, you see it in a different way.

“When I’m working on something, I often turn the canvas upside down and work on it that way,” she says. “You just see the marks and the shapes and the colours, you don’t see six flowers in a row. And then when you turn it right-side-up again, you see it in a different way.” She’ll also look at her pieces in the mirror to get a new perspective. In a technological approach, she even takes photos on her iPhone to better determine what a piece is missing. “When it’s a little picture on an iPhone you can really see things. I look last thing before I go to bed and it will tell me what [the painting] needs.”

All of these efforts to make abstract her floral paintings are in part to ensure they aren’t just pretty. “I like work that shows the hand of the artist and shows that that person struggled to make the piece, not that it was just oh another one that they knew exactly how to paint and they just filled in the squares. I think with that kind of blood and sweat, it’s just not going to be pretty. And that’s okay with me.”

Pretty, says Evrard, is thin. It’s not interesting enough. The description beautiful, on the other hand, is something different. “You can be moved by something strange and find it very beautiful. And that’s so much more powerful than pretty.”

I like work that shows the hand of the artist and shows that that person struggled to make the piece, not that it was just oh another one that they knew exactly how to paint and they just filled in the squares. I think with that kind of blood and sweat, it’s just not going to be pretty.

Evrard grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the daughter of a doctor. Though she didn’t always know she wanted to be an artist, she had exposure to the arts when she was a child. “I took art lessons from some nuns because my dad was a doctor and he looked after [them]. And I remember they had us draw every kernel on these Indian corns. It’s one of my earliest art memories.”

Her father also had a workshop in the basement, a place where he carved and collected rocks and made jewellery. “I liked to go down there and mess around,” says Evrard. “So maybe that’s partly how I got to be an artist.”

In high school, Evrard made another small, but conscious decision that foretold her artistic career. “If you wanted to go to university, you couldn’t take art, you had to take science. I ditched out on physics for art.”

That decision led to an experience that Evrard remembers still today, a memory that holds the key to her love of art. “I remember really clearly,” she says. “We were drawing this skinny, tall guy who was wearing a blue jean jacket and blue jeans. I remember moving my pencil on the paper and drawing the seams of his jeans and it was just the most magic experience, to translate something from a real object to a pencil line.” She found peace and satisfaction in art-making.

Despite that, Evrard didn’t pack her pencils and notebooks and head to art school. She did, however, study art history at Brown University in Rhode Island. Before pursuing a master’s degree in Iowa, she spent a year in Holland. While she was not a fan of Iowa (she didn’t go into detail), Evrard is generally a fan of visiting new cities. Since becoming a full-time practicing artist, she’s gone to several artist retreats and villages. Now, she calls Vancouver home — at least part of the year. Her flight early tomorrow morning lands in Italy, where she lives part-time in Umbria.

“The thing about moving to a different city is how you get to reinvent yourself. There’s an unknown quantity and you can sort of start over and be whoever you want to be. When I moved up to Canada, I don’t know, if you’re from somewhere else, people pay attention.”

We were drawing this skinny, tall guy who was wearing a blue jean jacket and blue jeans. I remember moving my pencil on the paper and drawing the seams of his jeans and it was just the most magic experience, to translate something from a real object to a pencil line.

Of Italy, Evrard says a random chain of events led her there the first time. Another chain set her to purchase a home. “I went to a cocktail party at somebody’s house, found out that someone else had retired early from SFU and had gotten a place in Italy and was renting it out,” she tells me. “My husband and I decided to rent it and then we loved it so much that I said we weren’t leaving unless we go back in the fall.”

Indeed, they returned not long afterwards. While they didn’t see the financial case for purchasing a second home in Italy, some friends told them their son was buying a place, so Evrard and her husband decided to chip in. “We bought it sight unseen. I feel really lucky to live part of the year in Italy and absorb that culture. It makes you feel like a citizen of the planet — not a Canadian or an American or an Italian.”

I live in a really small town in a rural valley and my friends over there are stonemasons and carpenters, and I have a lot of days where I’m pretty much by myself. I think solitude is probably the most necessary ingredient to creativity and that’s where I get a lot of it.

Life in Italy and Vancouver are wildly different for the artist. For starters, Evrard doesn’t even have internet in the old country. “You wake up and you know you’ve got the whole day to yourself,” she tells me. “And you’re not going to waste it looking at YouTube videos of cats. It puts you right up against life and against yourself. It’s not always fun; sometimes it’s lonely. I live in a really small town in a rural valley and my friends over there are stonemasons and carpenters, and I have a lot of days where I’m pretty much by myself. I think solitude is probably the most necessary ingredient to creativity and that’s where I get a lot of it. Sometimes when I get there, I get a cramp from the difference in my life here, which is really busy.”

Her practice in Italy is about research and technique, while in Vancouver it’s about exploration and creation. “The light in Italy makes everything seem as if it’s an important antique,” she says. The light in Vancouver, on the other hand, is blue and melancholic.

In Italy, Evrard painted little studies on copper sheets. “I had a bunch of copper lying around because I used to do etchings and prints, so I started painting on it and I just really love the way when you paint on copper, you can see every single brush mark.” She compares it to figure skating, where you practice the same figures on ice over and over again, perfecting them before moving on to jumps or spins. “I think a lot about the craft of painting and how to paint when I do those little paintings. And those require a real calmness because you can’t change your mind or it turns into a mess. They’re kind of meditative.”

I had a bunch of copper lying around because I used to do etchings and prints, so I started painting on it and I just really love the way when you paint on copper, you can see every single brush mark.

She ships the small paintings back to Vancouver, but she doesn’t use them in her practice here, working, instead, on larger pieces in her backyard studio. But the marks she’s practiced on copper take new meaning on canvas: “I’m thinking in patches of green and yellow and whatever colours. When you get up close I want it to be a bunch of interesting marks and then you can step back and it can resolve itself into something.”

While life in Italy is very quiet, Evrard still tries to explore. There’s a lot of grunt work maintaining the property, but she takes bike trips around the country to see other regions and get some exercise. While biking is a very Vancouver pastime, Evrard has a different hobby keeping her heart rate up in the rainy city.

“I like to do circus stuff,” she tells me. “I like to climb aerial silks.” As a child, she always wanted to do trapeze when the circus came to town. So when CirKids started offering adult classes, her friends told her she had to do it. “So I did. Trapeze was pretty scary.”

The circus arts attracted Evrard because they can be solitary, comparison to team sports. They’re also a bit unusual and physically and emotionally challenging, which I think she’s intrigued by as well. “I just like to be outside my element,” she says. “I like to do things, to take chances. I guess that’s why I like to travel and be in places where I don’t speak the language, and why I like to climb up a silk and see if I can do some trick. It’s why I like to go out to my studio and see how a painting will turn out.”

If anything, her circus tricks bring out the inner child in her. Also a former Arts Umbrella instructor, it’s no wonder she donates to Splash. “I don’t think growing up is that easy and I think it really helps to have confidence in some creative field. If a kid can learn how to express him or herself in any of the arts, I think that’s important.”