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At her solo exhibition during the month of June of this year at the Art Gallery of Bancroft, Lake Weslemkoon resident, Lynne Vegter showed a fine array of very sophisticated realist nature and wildlife oil on canvas paintings—plus a small group of found wood sculptures—that she had completed since 2019. It was her very first exhibition—an extraordinary fact since she had only been painting professionally in any focused way in that very short five-year timeframe. Vegter was born and raised in Somerset, England, attended junior public and grammar school and, with some exposure to art-making in her schooling, wanted badly to go to art school. She recalls walking past an art store on her way to and from school and pressing her face against the front window and pining to get her hands on some of the supplies on display. She applied to go to an art college and was accepted; but her highly practical, low-income family couldn’t afford that and considered it a frivolous idea anyway. So, she settled into working in factories and then, at the age of nineteen met and married a navy millwright who soon after decided for them that they would move to Canada (he had previously visited Toronto)—which they did. Hubby found work at the Bruce nuclear plant and they took up residence in an apartment in Kincardine—with Lynne having a boy and a girl to move into motherhood. She had been overwhelmed by the physical difference between the small scale of her homeland and the huge landscape of their adopted home and its varieties of cultures. And researched the Inuit peoples and made several drawings of them—both immediately selling to the family insurance agent. And reminding her again of how much she wanted art to be an important aspect of her life. Eventually her marriage broke down and she found herself scraping by financially with the two children in her sole care. And conceived of the idea of setting herself up a pottery studio and teaching the craft. She put together a proposal for a bank loan and landed it and purchased a kiln and supplies and launched into it, teaching the decoration and finishing of stock pottery and then firing it for her students. Seeking a stronger way to make a living, she obtained some government assistance and leveraged her technically-inclined side to study mechanical engineering at Durham College in Oshawa. While there she met her next partner, Will and the two of them got work in the nuclear energy sector—her at Darlington and him at Pickering. |
After living in a house in Oshawa for several years, they settled in Newcastle working and putting her kids through school. She retired in 2015 and a short time later they found and purchased their property on Weslemkoon and proceeded to build a lovely big home. And after moving there, Vegter found the free time—and Will created the work space/studio for her—to finally throw herself into art-making fulltime. And the five years of painting production followed. She soon became a volunteer at the Art Gallery of Bancroft as well as at A Place for the Arts and joined numerous Ontario art associations. She will be a guest at the studio of Bob Pearson at 810 Devenish Road, Baptiste Lake during this fall’s studio tour (the weekends of September 23-24 and 30-31). Connect with this highly industrious and wonderfully skilled/realized artist at lynne.vegter@outlook.com (Profile writing and photo by Allan O’Marra) |
