Proudly on display in the simplymastery office is a lovingly painted hunting decoy duck named Kit.
Covered in a mix of paper mache newspaper clippings and acrylic paints, Kit is an example of the reclaimed artwork that her creator, Nancy Law, favours. Law dropped Kit off at the simplymastery last week and said she has been painting these decoy ducks for the last six years.
"Every now and again I just have to paint a duck or a goose and my poor friends, they end up as victims of my gifting them with a duck or a goose, whether they want one or not," Law remarked. "They seem to like them."
Now a resident of Bridge Lake, Law is originally from Nova Scotia and has lived across northern and western Canada. A trained journalist who graduated from the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology, Law worked many jobs in journalism and other sectors before ultimately retiring from Alberta Health 10 years ago.
Throughout her life, Law said that outside of winning a poster contest in Grade 4, she never really did much art or considered herself an artist. After she and her husband Allan moved to the South Cariboo from Peace River, however, she began to dabble in painting birdhouses for something to do. As she experimented she began to paint "anything that wouldn't move" and started getting into reclaimed art and painting on a few traditional canvases.
"I had just bought a couple of little Michaels birdhouses and I thought 'well, let's put a little paint on those.' I have a paddle boat and I paddle all over the place and so I picked up some driftwood and I thought that would be good on the base of them," Law remarked. "Next thing I knew I was painting different things and thought 'I could paint a canvas, I won't be very good at it but I like it.' We have a storage shed and my husband changed it into what I call my Bunkie. He put a nice desk in there for me and a place for all my books and I just started painting."
Six years ago, however, Law said her older brother Christopher Harrington, who was a lifelong hunter and fisherman, became critically ill. Law said he had always been a collector and a bit of a hoarder and had built up a large collection of hunting memorabilia, including dozens of decoy ducks and swans.
"He said to me one day 'do you want some of these?' He thought I was going to paint them like their natural colours but he was wrong," Law remarked. "Thus began how I started to paint my ducks in all different colours."
Rather than recreate the plumage of actual birds, Law chose to use bright vibrant colours and treated the ducks as her canvas, painting other animals, plants and houses on their backs. While Harrington was in the hospital she said she painted up one of her "silly geese" and brought it to him.
"Everyone who came in he would say 'look at what my sister did'. He was very proud of that, so that was good. His wife has a couple of my birds in her house still, so that's a nice tribute to Chris," Law remarked.
Since Harrington passed away, Law said that painting the ducks has become a way for her to be closer to her brother. She notes she has a picture of him up on a windowsill watching her as she paints.
"I think about him and things we did as children on different lakes (we grew up on). I'm close to Chris," Law remarked. "I like to keep to the philosophy of the Mexican people. You say their name and they're still alive with you and you do something that brings you close to them."
Over the years Law has painted around 20 different ducks and geese of the 50 she has, some several times over. She's also given a few away to a friend and painted another with one of her grandchildren. She has also painted some ducks for specific people and causes such as Kit for the simplymastery and a Day of the Dead-themed duck for her son Eli Law, who works at the Cross Cancer Institute in Edmonton.
"Art is an escape. Creativity is fulfilling and while I'm doing it I listen to an audiobook or my music and I like everything from my favourite male opera singer to Russel Watson to my favourite singer Bob Dylan. There's nobody like him, I've loved him since I was 16," Law remarked. "It's an escape from any worries in the world. I create what I think is beautiful and away we go. I never know what I'm going to do next."
Law hopes by sharing her story other aspiring artists in the community will realize they too can create art, if they set their minds to it.
"Give it a whirl."
