ON REACHING 80 by RFM McInnis

ON REACHING EIGHTY,
I can look back on a long career of drawing and painting. I drew as a child in my father’s restaurant in Grand Bay, New Brunswick at least at age five. I sat in a booth with Mum while dad served customers. I coloured.

By grade six, I was drawing and colouring the school projects we were given (“Booklets” they were called) as part of our homework. I won a prize for an illustrated poem I had written for a Remembrance Day contest and exhibited my paintings of sailing ships sitting them along the blackboard ledge during grade seven and eight.

These are the earliest memories I have of an early interest in art. From grade nine to 12, I was Home-Roomed in the Art Department of Saint John Vocational School, graduating with a Diploma in Fine and Applied Art, class of ’61.

Now, as I look back, it seems an achievement. And I’m still at it.

RFM McInnis