Christie is an artist with a rural Ontario background and a love of drawing and painting. She was born on Manitoulin Island and grew up on a farm on the Island. Although Christie moved away for a number of years once she was grown, trying out the city and town scene, the Island and the country life was always “home” to her.
Since she was a child it was her dream to one day “be an artist” and although she did not have a college art education, she worked away at her art on her own and received professional arts and design instruction through numerous weekend workshops and evening classes over the years, and by studying almost everything related to art she could get her hands on.
Drawing has always intrigued Christie and besides watercolours, a substantial part of her work consists of coloured pencil, graphite and pen & ink drawings. Her paintings show the strong drawing base she has acquired. There is also a strong design element in Christie’s work, the result of working for area newspapers doing typesetting and layout/design work for several years; she also spends a substantial amount of time designing forms and brochures for the company where she is employed as a secretary.
Christie has had her work exhibited at various exhibitions in Northern Ontario, and several solo exhibitions on the Manitoulin and North Shore area. She has completed many commissions of people and places – even to the extent of piecing together up to a dozen photos into one composition – to develop a painting the “way things used to be”. Christie works from life and from photographs, old and new.
She is also keen on photography and capturing wildlife on film, although she uses her scenery shots as research for her watercolours. She has also recently found that gardening can be a consuming interest and we will probably see paintings of flowers gradually creeping into her collection.
