My passion for art was inspired by my mother who was a talented artist. I have wonderful memories of her standing at her easel in our kitchen with a paintbrush in hand and a canvas in the works. She was fearless and ahead of her time. Her portraits and landscapes used vibrant colours and leaned towards abstraction. I seem to have inherited her eclectic style of painting. My father was creative in other ways. His love of language inspired me to write short stories and now I move back and forth between painting and writing, depending on my mood. When I was young, my mother took me to visit Art Galleries and Museums. I remember our first visit to the McMichael’s Gallery where we met A.Y Jackson, member of the Group of Seven. I later learned that A.Y. Jackson was a cousin of our friends and he often visited their cottage in Woods Bay. They took us by boat to the same spot where A.Y. Jackson once painted. My watercolour “Moon River Falls” was inspired by that visit (page 49). During my lengthy working careers as teacher, trustee, and management consultant, my artistic pursuits were put on hold. In the summer of 1993, my interest in painting was rekindled when I attended the first of many week-long, plein air workshops at the Blue Mountain School of Landscape Painting and fell in love with the incredible Canadian landscape. Subsequently, many of my watercolours were painted while boating with my family in Georgian Bay. From my vantage point on the water, I tried to capture the images that very few people have an opportunity to see. Many of the scenes in this book reflect the panoramic vistas we enjoyed while anchored in Georgian Bay and in the North Channel. My winter landscapes were inspired by ski trips to the Rockies, Collingwood, and Horseshoe Valley. Winter visits to Yellowknife in the North West Territories literally took my breath away. The ice fog was so startling that I was compelled to capture it forever in a painting (page 39). Trips to Venice, Portugal and Greece resulted in a series of paintings of people and places that appear in this book. Over the years, I was privileged to share many creative moments with fellow artists - kindred souls - often holding a paint brush in one hand and a cup of tea or a glass of wine in the other. I have tried to recreate that welcoming salon atmosphere in my own studio in Horseshoe Valley, where I paint and host workshops with guest artists. http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/Evelyn378