At Thornbury’s Loft Gallery, Debra Lynn Carroll paints with three-dimensional effects before a live studio audience.
Debra Lynn Carroll steps back, tilts her head from side to side, and eyes a large canvas. The bottom third remains empty, roughly outlined in loose charcoal squiggles.
On the palette beside her, she mixes and blends globs of oil paint before applying them to the canvas. This “wet-on-wet” approach allows her to push the paint around, edging it gently until it appears to thicken, as if coming out from the canvas. A landscape gradually emerges—a large autumn scene of a meadow in Killarney Provincial Park.
At Loft Gallery Inc. on main street Thornbury, light pours in through the window. People walk by, some stop and peer, others come inside to stand quietly and watch. On any given day, artists work here, giving the space a congenial atmosphere.
“It’s unusual to have artists actually painting in a gallery,” says Debra, “but the concept here is to both sell art and to create an experience. We have music playing. Sometimes we even dance!”
While visitors mingle and chat, she continues to layer-on the paint. “I’m mostly oblivious to my surroundings when I’m focusing on a painting,” she says, “but it’s nice to have people around. It creates an energy.”
She talks of energy in her paintings as well, the energy of nature which she strives to capture in the vivid, large-format landscapes that have defined and propelled her success as a painter. Her most popular pieces are six-foot by nine-foot triptychs, of which she’s painted 20 and counting. Her biggest painting was a five-panel measuring five by 15 feet.
Debra was born in Kentville, Nova Scotia, one of seven children. After graduating from Dalhousie University with an MBA, she left Nova Scotia to travel in the eighties.
In 1987 she moved to Toronto. At this time, as a single parent with a young son, she was at a low point and looking for a way to re-engage with life. She remembers watching an Oprah Winfrey show about discovering what you love to do. The show suggested going back to what you liked in childhood.
“It came to me that I loved doing art when I was a kid. I remember taking painting classes and winning a prize at the county exhibition. I wondered if that could be a career path,” Debra says.
“When it’s going well,” she muses, “they paint themselves. I just feel lucky to be hanging on to the brush.”
She enrolled in an occupation rehab program and art came up as an option. Of course, people warned her that it was hard to make a living as an artist. Undeterred, she thought, “If some people can make a living, why not me?” She enrolled at the Ontario College of Art and Design (OCAD) and graduated in 2000.
With a “huge” student loan to pay off, she rented a studio at the Women’s Art Association of Canada, on Prince Arthur Avenue in Toronto. Her first show in the gallery there sold enough paintings to boost her confidence.
“I was painting like a fiend back then,” she says with a laugh, “and always large-size paintings. I decided early on that I couldn’t make a living with small paintings.”
She was soon signed-on by Toronto’s prestigious Gallery 133, and began selling enough to pay off her student loan.
By 2006 her son had graduated from high school and she was ready for a move out of Toronto. She explored areas within a 100-kilometre radius, hoping to find a small town with the same ambiance as her hometown in Nova Scotia. A friend who had a cottage on Lake Eugenia drove her around southern Georgian Bay.
As they passed through Clarksburg she spotted an old garage being refurbished. It looked perfect. Soon after, she opened Loft Gallery, displaying her work along with a stable of other artists.
Everything in her new surroundings reminded her of the Annapolis Valley in Nova Scotia where she grew up. The apple orchards in the Beaver Valley, the rugged Niagara Escarpment, the Blue Mountains, and the ocean-like waters of Georgian Bay all felt familiar. This natural beauty provides her subject matter and inspiration.
“I need to get out into the landscape,” she says. “That’s what keeps me going.”
By 2015 she was finding it hard to both manage the art gallery and find time for her own painting. She closed the Clarksburg location and her sister Heather started Loft Gallery Inc. in Thornbury with Debra as one of the resident artists. Since then, she has been able to paint full-time.
Debra’s paintings are best-known for their magical, three-dimensional quality that pulls the viewer into the canvas, as if walking into the scene, often along a winding pathway. For this reason, she doesn’t include people in her landscapes, feeling they would detract from the perspective of the viewer.
It’s a busy day at Loft Gallery. More people come inside to browse as Debra continues to work on the Killarney meadow scene. With each brushstroke a new image of lush foliage appears. She is in the rhythm, her brush like a conductor’s baton, waving gently to create the flow.
“When it’s going well,” she muses, “they paint themselves. I just feel lucky to be hanging on to the brush.”
