Hometown News

[mbarrick]

E. J. Hughes died on Friday at the Cowichan District Hospital in Duncan at the age of 93. Hughes was born in North Van and grew up in Nanaimo. He'd lived in Duncan for the past 29 years. The gallery representing him is on the main street in Duncan, Station Street (which is all of three blocks long). My old work had one of his paintings in the boardroom. E. J. Hughes holds the distinction of one of his paintings receiving the highest price ever at auction for a living Canadian artist, over one million dollars taxes and fees in. Of course he sold the painting for $300 many years before and never saw a cent of that.

I've been a fan of Hughes' work for decades and it has been an influence on my own. If you don't recognizes the name, you may recognizes the style:

"View of Maple Bay" (Incidentally. this is where I used to row in high school. The building with the reddish-brown second floor immediately behind the red railing of the government wharf is the Maple Bay Rowing Club. I know this strip of shore so well that I recognizes individual rocks and have a good idea of when it was painted from the height of the trees)

Comments

[mermaid23.livejournal.com]

Did you used to do sculling? I used to be a coxen when I was a little girl. My dad used to be on the Harvard rowing team in university and then his team went on to the Olympics, so I grew up being taught by my dad :)

[mbarrick.livejournal.com]

I did scull and sweep. Mostly I raced single scull and sat power-seat in our men's heavy-weight eight. I rowed for SFU for a while, too, also in 6-seat in the men's eight.

MBRC was the "Bad News Bears" of rowing on Vancouver Island. Almost all of our equiment was antiquated cast-offs from Brentwood College and Shawinigan Lake Boys' School. The single scull we had as an utter pig of a shell that the other crews wouldn't even touch as trainer. I'm very proud of the fact that I actually managed to place, and on rare occasion *win* in that pig. One of our shining moments was having to stop on the way to the start-line at a regatta at Burnaby Lake for the more hung-over members of the crew to throw up before the race.

If you ever notice me poking my right shoulder and wincing or getting a spasm in my right shoulder, that's my rowing injury. I had to replace our stroke-seat in the eight in a regatta at Shawnigan Lake and managed to catch a crab just after we got up to speed on the start that caught me under the arm. I dislocated my shoulder and ripped my pectoral minor and with the sort of stupidity only a rower can understand, went and finished the 2500 m race because I didn't want to screw over the other seven people in the shell.

My sister has taken up Masters rowing and was bugging me to get back into it when I saw her for Christmas. It's a tempting idea since I'm right here in Coal Harbour anyway.

[turtle-time.livejournal.com]

I lasted about five minutes on that rowing team. Something about cold wet early mornings did not mix with my fifteen-year-old laziness. But I attended countless regattas growing up; it came with being the coach's daughter's friend.

I really like EJ Hughes, but I'd never seen that print of Maple Bay. I remember that stretch of beach well, although I never got quite so intimate with it :)

[mbarrick.livejournal.com]

I seem to recall something about you getting an abrupt introduction to Somenos Lake on foggy evening, though :-p

[turtle-time.livejournal.com]

Haha. I think it was Quamichan Lake, actually - either Christmas Eve or Christmas night 1984. A vintage year for boyfriends, as I recall. And a sharp lesson on what it feels like to be in a sinking car.

[captain-bonk.livejournal.com]

He was sitting right below my friends house David Clark when he painted that one you have. I kept my little Sabo Sail Boat there. We would take it out a lot from that location. I know that beach well too.

I have a print of his. Again, he was sitting right below my Grandparents place in Crofton when he painted "An Arbutus Tree in Crofton". He liked the way their Arbutus Tree arched down toward the beach. He took artistic license with the distance and the Saltspring Island Ferry on the one I have. This one you post looks exactly the way I remember Maple Bay. This was the good snorkeling zone where Harley Ware and I used to go.

Thanks for posting

[mbarrick.livejournal.com]

My "first time" was at almost this exact spot after a MBRC Guy Fawlkes bonfire.

[seymour-glass.livejournal.com]

i like his style and his use of colour...i wasn't aware of him, but now that i am i'll have to look up some more of his work...