Hallie Watson

Plate, Spoon and Napkin.
Oil pastel on paper, texted sintra
13.75” x 19.5”
Jan. 29, 2005

Plate,Spoon and Napkin, January 29,2005

How wonderful that a cryptic mark on the bottom of our soup bowls could say so much. They were made on September 19, 1871. William Morris was creating his designs from nature. Darwin had published his Origin of Species only twelve years earlier. Whistler had just painted his mother.

In 1871 I would have worn a corset laced up tight. On top of that, a bustle- a wire framework that made a kind of shelf out the back. On top of that the petticoat and then layers of the dress itself. My feet would not show. Certainly not my legs.

Here I am now. The bowls are still the same. The soup has probably improved ( it is Szechwan carrot soup) and I am luxuriously corsetless.

Lexi’s Sofa.
Oil pastel on paper, texted sintra
19.5” x 27.5”
Aug. 15, 2005

Lexi’s Sofa.

   It was summer. Young Lexi lay on the sofa having an afternoon nap. She could hear her mother and her grandmother talking in the next room. In her half awakeness, their voices mingled gently with the leaves swishing outside in the summer wind. There were bird sounds far away. Her cheek made an impression on the down cushion.

   Now, when she looks at the sofa, what matters most is not the wonderful carving on the back of the sofa, or the S curve of it’s shape. It is the gentle whisper of leaves mixed with the voices of her mother and grandmother, heard in the half sleep of a small girl on a summer afternoon.

Ice Bucket.
Oil pastel on paper, texted sintra
19.5” x 27.5”
Feb. 18, 2004

Ice Bucket Feb 18 2004

   Every evening my Dad would come home from work and eventually make his way to the bar where he would crack open a whole tray of ice and dump it into the ice bucket. Then he made himself and my Mother a gin and tonic before dinner. It was a happy and relaxed time of day. The three of us sat in front of the T.V., my Dad to my left, my Mum to my right. My Mum always had her drink with lots of ice and a terry sock over the bottom of the glass to keep her hands from getting cold.

Blue Chair # 2.
Oil pastel on paper, texted sintra
19.5” x 27.5”
July 21, 2003

Blue Chair #2

When you sit in this chair it’s so deep it’s more like lying down. It is impossible to sit primly in it; you must recline. It requires you to give in. When you’re in it, the wings block out your side vision so you are in a soft cave.

The Green Chair
Oil pastel on paper, texted sintra
19.5” x 27.5”
July 21, 2003

Green Chair Aug 16 2002

   This chair came from my grandfather’s house. I used to sit in it to watch T.V. All the joints are loose in it so when you sit in it there is a lot of creaking and squeaking. My Dad would always say to me when I was making too much noise, ‘Hallie, stop surging.’

   His mother used to say the same thing to him.

Jean’s Mother’s First Needlepoint
Oil pastel on paper, texted sintra
27.5” x 19.5”
Aug., 2003

Jean’s Mother’s First Needlepoint

   When Jean’s mother was perhaps nine, she made her first needlepoint of a butterfly. It is a testament of her family’s love for her that they bought this beautiful inlaid chair to display the work.

Sherry
Oil pastel on paper, texted sintra
19.5” x 13.75”
Nov. 23, 2004

Sherry

   I never drank sherry except when I went to my Nana's for lunch. She kept the bottle in a wonderful cabinet that my grandfather brought back from Europe after the First World War. She would pour the beautiful amber liquid into a crystal glass and we would sink into the down filled sofa cushions and talk and laugh and relax and get a little elevated and then repair to the dining room table to have lunch. It was very pleasant.

Quail Eggs
Oil pastel on paper, texted sintra
19.5” x 27.5”
Aug. 17, 2006

Quail Eggs

   Quail eggs are special. They’re small and precious, spotted to camouflage them from marauders. Though they are offered to us as a grocery item, I think that they are too special to eat.

   When I was young, we would go to our farm in the country every weekend. I would play with my friend Carol whose mother had come from England after the war, bringing a special cabinet with her. It had about a dozen small drawers which, when opened, revealed compartmentalized trays. Each compartment was carefully lined with cotton wool as a nest for one or more wild bird eggs. The cabinet was her bird egg collection. I loved to open each drawer and marvel at the eggs — big duckeggs to tiny sparrow eggs. They were each marvellous and magical.

Oriental Pot
Oil pastel on paper, texted sintra
19.5” x 27.5”
Feb.11, 2004

Oriental Pot Feb 11 2004

   This pot was around all my life and I never paid any attention to it, until two things happened - my stepmother designed a whole room around it, and my son Tom could fit inside it.

Indian Tree Plate.
Oil pastel on paper, texted sintra
13.75” x 19.5”
July 9, 2007

Indian Tree Plate
   The maid went to fetch the plates. She was cross. First, there was all that last week and now this. It wasn’t fair! She picked up a stack of plates and made up her mind to say something. She was so angry she wanted to scream. It just wasn’t right. She banged the plates down hard and heard an extra sound when she did it. There was a sudden silence in her head and a horrified suspension of time as she looked down at the top plate. She saw that it was now cracked – not broken, but definitely cracked. And the one below, and the one below that. The whole stack of plates, with the Indian Tree design and the wavey outer edges was cracked. Oh no, oh no, oh no! She was in trouble now. Maybe they wouldn’t notice.

   They did notice. They noticed, but times were different then, so instead of throwing them out, the plates were repaired. Each crack was strengthened along its length on the back with what looked like staples. Tiny holes were drilled and the staples glued in carefully to hold the crack together. The name of the maid faded and time filtered and shifted.

   The house, once surrounded by a huge, sunny lawn, now stands in the deep shade of trees that have been growing for eighty years. The plates are unchanged. Still the staples on the back of each one hold the cracks together and the plates with the Indian Tree design and the wavey outer edges remain unbroken.

Place Setting.
Oil pastel on paper, texted sintra
13.75” x 19.5”
July 5, 2005

Place Setting.

   My Dad gave my Mum a grandmother clock when they got married. It is a pretty thing, hand painted with flowers down the front, dinging at the hour and at the half hour. For my whole life it set the pace for the domestic routine without stopping.

   Before she went to bed, my mother would set the table for breakfast. We would all get up the next morning at the same time, have breakfast and go off to work and school. At the end of the day, I'd come home and Mummy would be setting the table for dinner. She always set it at four thirty. There was a prescribed way to do this- the serving spoons here, the hot mats here. The glasses and silverware always this way.

   The placemats changed from day to day. They were pulled from a large collection handed down from my grandmother and probably her mother. They were lacy, plain, coloured, hand embroidered, tatted and crocheted, and from every country anybody in the family had ever been to. With them went the napkins carefully ironed and folded.

   It was beautiful. The silver cleaned, the lacy patterned mats contrasting with the dark polished wood. The glasses shone. I always thought that setting the table in the afternoon was way too early for a dinner which wasn't produced until eight, but the routine was a structure that the household hung on - reliable and comforting. The clock dinged every half hour, and life was as it should be.

   Having dinner was an old world arrangement. My parents dressed for dinner. My father put on dinner music. I had long ago had my supper and was working on my homework. There was conversation.

   After dinner my Mum did the dishes and set the table for breakfast. Every single day. Except when they went out for dinner and dancing which was always on Thursday night.

Audie’s Sofa.
Oil pastel on paper, texted sintra
19.5” x 27.5”
Aug. 1, 2003

Audie's sofa

   This sofa begins its story belonging to Granny Newnham, who as a young woman fell love with a fellow who became the Bishop of Moosonee. It travelled in the late 1880's from Montreal by sailing ship to their home in Moosonee which was defined as Aall land draining into Hudson’s Bay.

   They had one daughter, and then two sets of girl twins. The women were at one time described as ‘two pairs and a peach.’

   Audie’s mother played the part of the Bishop’s wife, establishing schools and hospitals and women’s associations wherever she went. She established St.Alban’s School for Girls in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan (bringing the headmistress from Scotland) so that her girls would have a ‘proper’ school to go to .

   Audie was always the frail one. She contracted TB in early childhood and remained a spinster all her life. She is remembered by her great-niece as quiet and mild. She liked sherry and menthol cigarettes, which she smoked all her life.

Paperweight
Oil pastel on paper, texted sintra
19.5” x 13.75” Feb. 25, 2004

Paperweight

   My mother had a paperweight collection. They were all beautiful, the glass globes displayed on a glass topped counter in my parents’ bedroom. The biggest one though, lived in the living room. It was as big as a bowling ball. It came to us through my grandmother, who as a young girl of 18 brought it back from her European tour. I imagine the glass maker in Murano, Italy, getting up in the morning, having his morning coffee then going to his workshop to make this magical glass ball, trapping some of his life in it. My grandmother bought it and then it went to my Dad and then to me. Now my children put their faces up close to it and think it is like a world suspended in hardened water. It is a crystal ball with the past and the future entwined.

Standard Lamp
Oil pastel on paper, texted sintra
27.5” x 19.5”
Feb. 7, 2005

Standard Lamp

   After my grandmother built her rather grand house in Forest Hill, she had a decorator come in and help her with the interior. The house had a definite Spanish flavour, inspired by houses that my grandmother had seen in Panama. Inside, there was a curving staircase, a good deal of wrought iron and stuccoed walls.

   The decorator’s name was Minerva Elliot. Even now her name drifts through time to the present in a charmed way, as though her unusual name, Minerva, can somehow work magic. Perhaps it did, because the hallmark of Minerva’s work, to me, is that she painted everything gold. All the lamps from that time - wonderfully carved and turned from wood - were painted gold.

The Jesuit’s Teapot
Oil pastel on paper, texted sintra
13.75” x 19.5”
July 19, 2007

The Jesuit’s Teapot

   It was suddenly cold. The river froze, cutting off their hopes of leaving this rough, northern place. The brothers knew that they were stuck there for the duration of the winter. Snow fell, the flakes falling gently and persistently, so beautiful and white, piling up on the branches of the trees and on the ground one flake upon the other until it was so deep that they needed snowshoes to walk. There was no winter like this back in France.

   The dark, short days and the cold were frightening, and there was also the added threat of the people. The brothers feared for their lives. The bishop’s wife feared for them too, so she let them live secretly under the porch where they would be safe all winter.

   The days were long and thin, punctuated by the food she gave them and card games played deep into the dark nights.

   Spring finally came to the Canadian north and the river unfroze freeing the brothers. They escaped to France, finally, and felt grateful that the bishop’s wife had saved their lives. To thank her, they sent this tea set.

   The first time this story was told to me I thought the two men were Jesuit priests, come to spread their Catholic message in an Anglican community. I think I thought this because when the word ‘brother” came up that is what I assumed. So that’s why it is “The Jesuit’s Teapot.” Later I discovered that the ‘brothers’ were French traders in a commercial struggle with the Hudson’s Bay Company so you can think of it as “The Trader’s Teapot” if you like.

Pickled Pears
Oil pastel on paper, texted sintra
19.5” x 27.5”
Nov.3, 2006

Pickled Pears

   I am five. I’m sitting at the family festive table. Everyone is here, at my Nana and Grandpa’s, around the shining mahogany table. All the glass and candles and silver are glittering and lovely. I slip off my shoes and dig my toes into the carpet under the chair.

   I am wearing a new dress. The skirt puffs out at the waist in a delightful way and when I sit in the dining room chair it poofs up around me. But the crinoline underneath is scratchy and sticking into my waist uncomfortably. I try to ignore that and concentrate on the cut crystal dish in front of me with the pickled pears in it.

   Grandpa is giving a speech.

   The pickled pears are in front of me because I have chosen specifically to sit in front of them. Though called ‘pickled’, they are in fact spiced and sugary. They’ve had their skins peeled off but they still have the stem so you can hold on to them. They are especially small pears — half the size of a regular pear. They are so yummy that all the kids vie for them. Always they are in the faceted crystal dish with the jig jag upper edges.

   They were always there on Nana’s and Grandpa’s party table, appearing like magic from the pantry. We never got the recipe and now I need it. Times have moved on and now I am fifty. I’m searching out the recipe to create those spiced pears, but somehow they aren’t quite right. The missing ingredient is the hand of Nana stirring the pot.