Adam Prudhomme
Beaver Staff
Amherst Islander Shirley Miller has spent decades capturing the island’s unique charm through her paintings, some of which are featured in a new exhibit at the Lennox and Addington County Museum and Archives.
Miller will also be the guest speaker at the Feb. 19 Tuesday Night at the Museum, where she’ll speak of the exhibit, which is titled Revisiting Special Moments: A Retrospective. The presentation begins at 7 p.m.
“I paint stories,” said Miller. “When I started looking at all this stuff I realized there’s a story that goes with practically every one of them. A lot of them are from the island.”
Miller always had a talent for drawing but really fell in love with it after taking a paint lesson from David Wick in the 1970s. From there she began photographing landscapes, using the photos as reference when later putting brush to canvas. Her subjects range from countrysides to kids playing pond hockey.
“They find me,” Miller said of the subjects of her paintings. “I get excited about something and I start working on it.”
She says she loves recording the stories and personalities of Amherst Island in particular, though she has been known to paint scenes from Upper Canada Village and British Columbia, among others.
“I have this notion that if I don’t get excited about what I’m painting, then how can I expect anyone to get excited about the result? I have no plans passed that.”
Prior to retiring, her job involved driving the winding roads of Amherst Island, where she got to see all sides of it.
“I drove a school bus for 13 years,” she said. “I’d be around the island morning and night in all kinds of weather. You’d see the same old thing every day except one day they’d be a storm or the sun would be in the right place or something would get my attention, so then I’d take pictures.”
Over the years she’s dabbled in several different mediums, ranging from wood carving to sketching and even serving as cartoonist for the Amherst Island Beacon. She now teaches art classes on the island, though she doesn’t consider it painting so much as friends just helping each other work out any problems they have with their creations.
Admission to the Feb. 19 presentation is $3 at the door. The evening will include light refreshments and live music with Barry Lovegrove.
Miller’s paintings will be on display at the museum until April 6.