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When she was a teenager in Montreal, abstract painter, Clasina Weese got herself a professional SLR camera and discovered she loved shooting photos of landscapes, animals, family and flowers. And after public and high school, studied photography in a community college, learning to process and print black and white film and shooting lots of colour print and Kodachrome slide film. All this even though her dad was a skillful watercolour and oil painter whose creative practice didn’t rub off on her at that early stage. Years later (1998), a co-worker at her place of employment—who painted watercolours and was the often kindly offered recipient of her photos as reference—on one occasion, when she talked to him about the “million shades of green” in some of her pictures, impressed upon her that she should be a painter herself. And that was it: she went out and got watercolour paints, paper and an instruction book and launched into her painting career with the painting of a mini landscape; and took numerous workshops that helped move her over the years into larger watercolour realist works. Born in Holland and moved by her parents at six months old to Montreal, Weese, after her schooling, trained as a police technology specialist, relocated to London, Ontario and worked for fifteen years as a police dispatch worker and then added fire dispatch. She then moved to Goderich where she ran police communications for five different communities. Eventually, she married and returned to London and once again pursued employment as police and fire dispatcher. After having moved to Marmora, Clasina, in 2003, helped organize a charity art show-with all of the artists contributing paintings in support of an environmentally-sensitive project called ‘Friends of the Cove’. And while there took a special set of Loyalist College workshops in Belleville that moved her along to creating acrylic on canvas abstracts. In 2015, Weese purchased a house and property on Bay Lake Road and immersed herself in the art scene here in Bancroft. She became vice chair of the Art Gallery of Bancroft for several years; and was one of a show titled ‘Three Women’. And began participating in the community artist organization, A Place For The Arts where also, at one point, she was placed in charge; and where the sale of 11 of her hanging abstracts was a seminal occasion. |
In high school a teacher had said to her, “You can’t draw.” She says she owns that now and, further, “I make abstracts, I don’t need to!”. And speaks eloquently about her passion: “Abstract is about adding lines/filling in/shading/moving in and out/thoughts and mental processes”. Clasina Weese will be showing her work at the Freddie Towe studio facility at 116 Hershell Road off South Baptiste Road. You may contact her at ClasinaWeese@gmail.com (Profile writing and photo by Allan O’Marra) |
