Debra Botman pulls a sheet of rice paper from the table, presses heated wax into the grain, then paints watercolour across the surface in careful layers. The true painting only emerges after she irons the wax off at the end.
“You reveal a different story every time,” Botman said. “The paint decides where it wants to adhere.”
That spirit of discovery was celebrated during the NOTL Studio Tour on June 6 and 7, when 29 visual artists opened their homes and workspaces across Niagara-on-the-Lake to the public.
Now in its third year, the tour spanned 16 locations across town, giving the public a rare look inside daily routines behind artworks they would otherwise only ever see hanging on a wall.
Botman discovered the joy of watercolour painting during a paint-and-sip class at 13th Street Winery in 2016 and never looked back.
A decade later, her practice has grown well past traditional watercolour. She layers wax and pigment onto rice paper in a technique called batik, where each stage locks colour in place and the final result only appears after the wax is ironed away. She also works with Indian ink to add deep, contrasting blacks to her paintings.
Alongside this work, she sells a line of golf-themed greeting cards year-round at three golfing pro shops in Florida, and at Handmade Presents in Garrison Village.
Elsewhere in town, on King Street, pastel painter Cathy Cullis works from a home studio shared with her husband Rick, a landscape oil painter.
Cathy works from photographs taken on trips over the years, building up colour in layers on sanded paper, a surface rough enough to hold soft pastel without letting it slide off.
“I get a sense of the place while I’m there, just soak it in. And then years later, you can look at the photograph and still feel the same way we did when we were there,” she said.
Rick switched from other mediums to oil paint in 2017 after more than 40 years of painting. He described being drawn to how oil handles, and to working without solvents. One painting in his studio came directly from his backyard, where he spotted an ancient beech tree on Davie Street and felt the pull to put it on canvas.
“I was standing on my back deck one day and thought, ‘I gotta do that,'” he said.
Meanwhile, over on Rye Street, fibre artist Carolyn McKenzie spent the weekend at Fiberful, her studio packed with coloured wool, silk, beading supplies and a rare industrial roller, welcoming visitors who had likely never thought of felt as an art material before.
McKenzie spent the weekend explaining an art form most people only know from accidentally shrinking a wool sweater.
Felt starts as raw Merino wool, the same fibre used in quality knitwear. McKenzie layers it by hand, wets it, then works it until the fibres lock together and the whole piece shrinks and stiffens into a durable fabric.
She then adds stitching, beading and pieces of silk to finish each work. The process sounds complicated, but McKenzie said a single afternoon at a friend’s house was all it took to know she had found her medium.
“I came home with this piece of fabric that was sort of wild. I just looked at it and said, I have to do more of that,” she said.
Most finished pieces get cut up and sewn into practical objects like bags and pouches. Some she cannot bring herself to slice.
Visitors could handle her work freely, delighting in the soft subtle changes in texture. McKenzie encourages it, since finished felt is practically indestructible.
“People have walked in here all day and they’re not shy,” she said. “I just pick it up and tell them it’s fine. Because wool, once it’s in this form, is completely durable. You can’t hurt it.”
The NOTL Studio Tour returns June next year.
