Everyone wants to be inspired and keep some passion alive. It may be enlightening and inspirational for us, as artists, to look to Surge Narrows, a uniquely private off-the-grid island to learn from their life of trials and tranquility. In our busy world, we often get inundated with the "noises" and "clutter" of modernity. Some of us love it and thrive in such surroundings, but some get lost in the hustle and bustle of everyday life where keeping passions alive becomes challenging.

The people of Surge Island are certainly not lost and have managed to keep their passions alive. In March, we happily assisted this intriguing, quaint little community with a donation of art materials. In return, we kindly received a poetic and realistic account of one women's story about Surge Narrows' inspiration to keep the arts alive.

Painting with Friends
Chapter I

Imagine time steps out, a moment is fully involved; we're at the precipice of a sheet of pristine watercolour paper holding a brush of paint, about to fall.

We have gathered together today; children at bay. The crumbled sandwich left from lunch, the wind, the sun, the softness of the evening light. It takes the act of the undefined, between the skills applied, the moment to paint. My mother remembered a picnic on the farm, two children, a guest who was an artist. Watercolour blues of the sky swept over the bridge that crossed the river, with tall grasses dry in the middle of summer. The valley emerged on the paper before the man. The surroundings of the picnic are long past, the valley lost to life's changing ways, yet a painting marked the time. My child's eyes are now over fifty years old, and my watercolour paper lies before me. My youngest son is distracted from his painting to the imagination of skidding branches, to be winched over a fallen tree. My friend and I both have our sights on a huge leaning Maple, with sunlight dappling over me as much as the work on the paper?

Chapter 2

This will fortunately carry on, since Opus has kindly donated art supplies especially those pertaining to watercolours, a medium which calls for the most curious challenging eye. Here we can meet at this remote environment; this remote community, Read Island.

Life seems centered around our two-room schoolhouse, of Surge Narrows, its General Store, and Post Office on the wharf. One acquires various realms of self-sufficiency without hydro, town water, telephones. The homes range from basic, pre-basic, to post-basic, depending on skills brought or quickly learned from trial and error. We emerge from a combination of wits dreams and circumstances to acquire skills that run deep from experience in some and those that wing it. However, we are here; fishing harvests are gone. A one-family logging operation, still goes on, oyster farmers or clam diggers, and those who host Kayakers. What has begun to take shape beyond the necessities is a center for the Arts. It is from the remains of our previous school. A WWII Quonsett Hut, design, with its beautiful wall of windows. We are slowly bringing forth, "The Alvina Poitras Centre for the Arts." Well named after a single mother of children who took care of the school for thirty years. She is fondly remembered for her garden and is known well for her self-sufficiency and life skills, her contribution to new arrivals of cuttings from her garden ?and advice. So with her example to the community, we are taking our fledging flight; where we can bring together our art and experiences. Like these hot summer days, ocean currents, dappled light, as it waits for a brush to fall with colour on a pristine paper.