B.C. woman inspired by beach walks with dog to create art from found objects

Sawatsky Sign-Off: Beach art Adam finds out how a woman was inspired by walks with her dog to construct characters out of junk.

ESQUIMALT, B.C. — Before embarking upon their regular walk along the beach, Anita Coleman dressed her rescue dog in denim.

“I sewed on the flames and the dragon,” Anita says, pointing to the embroidered images on the back of her canine’s coat, before molding the hair on his head into a Mohawk. “So he looks like a tough little dude!”

Like her pup’s name is Bean, but looks nothing like one, Anita is searching for things on the beach that seem like something else.

“Noses, heads, ears,” Anita laughs while picking up sea glass, and rusty hardware. “You never know what you’re going to find.”

To appreciate her perspective, we need to go back to when her younger self drove from her home in Quebec to new adventures in California.

“I really wasn’t focused on a career,” Anita says. “I was just travelling, just living life.”

While she was working odd jobs from painting houses to selling produce, what Anita really wanted to do was draw. So the single mom sent some of her sketches to Hallmark Cards and got hired.

“I just started dancing around the kitchen with my son,” Anita recalls with a laugh. “Singing, ‘We’re in the money!’”

Anita spent the next 30 years as a professional artist, illustrating countless thousand humorous greeting cards.

“This one shows two old ladies having lunch,” Anita says, laughing at one of her cards depicting a woman pulling out her dentures to show her friend. “She says, ‘Do I have anything in my teeth?”

During her career, Anita learned to be inspired by quietly observing even the most mundane of moments every day.

“Even if you’re not feeling great, you still have to produce something humorous,” Anita says. “You’re a professional.”

Now Anita is a master at the art of seeing the positive possibilities in everything.

“This hinge could make good wings,” Anita smiles, unfolding a rusty hinge she found on a beach.

And now that Anita has retired from drawing two-dimensional characters on cards, she’s focused on constructing 3D ones, from the random things she finds on beaches and at thrift stores.

“Some people like shopping for shoes,” Anita laughs. “I like shopping for junk.”

And then she’ll transforming that that junk into a colourful character playing in a junk band, or attaching all sorts of bits and pieces on to hand-painted driftwood, to create a whole cast of whimsical critters. You can see some of them on her website (https://anitacolmanart.weebly.com/wood-works.html).

Dozens of Anita’s sculptures are displayed around her home. But despite many offers, she’s never considered selling them.

“They’re my family and friends,” she smiles. “I like having them around. Their presence comforts me.”

And perhaps they remind the rest of us, that if we take the time to observe the world around us, we just might find every element we need to turn the ordinary into something extraordinary.