Isabel Mosseler
Tribune
Artist Raymonde Beland has contributed a new mural to Sturgeon Falls, a bright and cheerful piece of floral whimsy to grace The Flower Shoppe in the downtown core. Beland came to art later in life, fulfilling her childhood dreams, and part of that dream is to also encourage and assist others in their pursuit of art through sharing her studio and her talents, providing insights into the mechanics of watercolor and many other mediums. “I started with watercolor while in Sherbrooke, (Quebec),” she says, moving on to other mediums, studying with accomplished artists, always learning and growing.
Beland says her initial art encounter was on a trip to Tuscany, with an eminent local artist with whom her brother was taking a class. “I was working crazy hours at the time, had my own business, and he says, ‘well I’m going to Tuscany, Italy, to paint.’ What?” She decided she wanted to go too. The class was fully booked, but someone broke their leg and there was an opening – so Beland went, fulfilling a dream that she had put off for too long. As the oldest of seven children, “what do you do? You take care of the other kids. (…) There’s no money to go around,” she recounts.
Beland grew up in Coniston and then moved to Montreal, then more recently to Sudbury to take care of her mother, and finally came to settle in Sturgeon Falls. “When I started the arts, I was just about to retire. I didn’t know it was coming and it just happened. You know, when the pieces fall into place.” Beland was a businesswoman with not much time for art. Of her first real encounter in Tuscany, she says of her instructor, “He doesn’t really teach you. He does his thing where he says, ‘hey, guys, go upstairs, put all your stuff down, come back down with your paints, easels by the door, and we’re going out in the field.’ I had never touched the brush. I didn’t know what I was doing. The big joke that week was that first day out in the field, I wanted to make clouds, so I kept mixing blue and white and I wasn’t getting the colour that I wanted (…) I wanted to make clouds, make the fluffy things. Then he started to laugh, that’s not how you make clouds. But I didn’t know, I’m just painting what I see, and it’s not a very good painting. It took about six months for it to dry, that’s how much paint there was on there!”
That was Beland’s intro to oils. She can look back on that and laugh. She painted for 7 days between sightseeing, and began to develop her love and skills, gaining inspiration. Back in Canada, she devoted another 12 months to her business, burning out from her workload, eventually selling, then returning to northern Ontario to help her parents. She started to take classes with different artists, both in Sherbrooke and then in Sudbury. “I took drawing classes because I had realized that I was having a hard time with buildings, like they were all wonky. …That was March of 2013, I joined the Sudbury Art club that year.” She became the treasurer of the Northern Ontario Art Association, and started to familiarize herself with the art scene, local artists, and the environs. Beland relates that she initially left the area when she was 19, so coming back was also a process of rediscovery. She began to work again, and again overdid it. “Just before I moved to Sturgeon, I realized I was completely stressed out.” She moved to Sturgeon Falls in April of 2021, the year after COVID. “And that’s when I started healing.” Art was part of that healing.