"I fell in love with art because of my grade five art teacher, Miss Tangelis. She was brand new to teaching. She was energetic, original, creative and full of fun. I just adored those classes. My first studio was the second floor bathroom of our house. I set up a card table and did DaVinci's "Last Supper" in paint-by-numbers!"

Today, Lyn Westfall's work is found in private collections, galleries and public spaces across Canada. As Lyn sits in her renovated Caledon schoolhouse studio, S.S. #9 at the corner of Heart Lake Road and Charleston Sideroad, she looks back on the many chapters of her career as a professional artist.

Lyn's life has been as colourful and complex as her paintings. After graduating from grade 12, she entered the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph of London where she spent 12 years as Sister Lyn Marie. During her convent years she became a qualified teacher (one only needed grade 13 to go to teachers college in those days) and while teaching primary school, she completed a degree at the University of Windsor with a Fine Arts major. "I loved it. When I came out of those art history lessons I was walking on air. I would literally float."

At the age of 30, Lyn took the necessary steps to be released from her vows as a nun. The lengthy discernment process ended with a letter, written in Latin, from the Pope in Rome. "It said you can go." Lyn recalls with a thoughtful smile.

"Here I was at the age of 30 beginning my life. I didn't have a bank account. I didn't know how to write a cheque. I did a course at the Banff School of Fine Arts, and it was there I decided that I was going to have to spend a lot of time if I was going to become a serious painter. I came back to Toronto and eventually got a job teaching art part time at Loretto Abbey. I spent those years actively painting. During this period, I realized that some of the best paintings came from young children. I decided to teach a night course for children, and I would simply watch them paint. I saw their fearlessness. I used the architecture of the Abbey but applied the children's sense of colour and that resulted in The Abbey Series."
In 1975, Lyn married and three years later moved to the Caledon schoolhouse studio where she still lives with her husband of 32 years, Rod Tramble.

"Seeing the children's initials carved into the bricks totally charmed me. You could tell how tall they were by the height they’d written at. I also fell in love with the land, the country roads, the trees. I have a special affection for the hawthorn tree. There's one particular hawthorn tree on the southwest corner of Horseshoe Hill Road and Escarpment Sideroad. It's a scrub tree, a nesting tree. I relate to it. I came from a big family. We were poor. The hawthorn tree is about survival in harsh conditions. I've observed it in the winter. It's just as beautiful then - you can see the bare bones of the tree.

"I'm not the kind of landscape painter who can go somewhere else and paint. It has to be a part of you. You have to eat it and breathe it. I feel as though I live in the center of the hills and that is what I have to paint. I think Escarpment Sideroad is one of the most beautiful roads in all of Ontario. The landscape might disappear someday. I feel I'm recording history. I'm not interested in painting houses or buildings. I will often paint them out. It's the land I'm interested in."

In recent years, Lyn's art has been inspired by suffering - her own and that of others. In 2001, Lyn lost her mother and entered a period of intense grief. Her mother's death opened many old wounds. "She was both my mother and my father. I lost my father when I was three months old. He was in a Wellington bomber night flying over Germany on September 10, 1942. His plane never returned."

All Lyn has of her father is his name, Wilfred Lavers, inscribed along with 20,450 other names on the Runnymede Memorial erected near Windsor, England. The memorial commemorates Commonwealth Air Force members - "no known grave… disappeared without a trace" reads the inscription.

"I wanted somehow to get an understanding of death. I looked at the language of death. In the Latin Mass, you get such words as "requiem" and "lux aeterna." Why those words? What do they mean? Why did the church use them? I started photocopying the words from the Roman Missal and cutting them out, tearing the pieces of paper, trying to put death into the pieces of a puzzle. The font was important. I wanted to do five pieces for the Caledon East Studio Tour. I did 20. I couldn't stop.

"I started to listen to the music of death. It was very heavy, very difficult. A friend suggested I listen to Gabriel Faure's Requiem. It's a more hopeful, more peaceful handling of death. The first few times I listened, all I did was cry. I got past the sadness and really listened to the music. I decided that I would like to paint the actual music.

"One piece lead to another. I had always wanted to do a war painting. Because my father had died in the war, I knew this subject was real to me but didn't know how to deal with it - until I heard Faure's Dies Irae (Day of Anger). And then September 11 happened. I immediately knew I had to do my war painting. I did a two panel painting combining images from World War II and 9/11. It took three years to complete.
"In 2003, I had an exhibition of 19 paintings at Gallery Lambton. The Clarion Symphony and Chorus performed Faure's Requiem live for the opening. It was like a wish come true. It surpassed anything I hoped for for these paintings.

"I also made a DVD called Lux Aeterna (Eternal Light) as a way of sharing this experience with a wider audience. In the DVD I can guide the viewer’s eyes to see the exact piece of art that corresponds to that part of the music. The viewer hears painting and sees music."

Lyn's life has always revolved around schools and children. Now retired from 33 years in the classroom, she offers private lessons for children at her Caledon schoolhouse studio and teaches annual summer courses with the CACY (Caledon Arts and Crafts for Youth) program in Caledon East.

Lyn brings the same bubbly, enthusiastic love of colour and creativity to her young charges that was instilled in her as a 10-year-old girl.

A complete collection of Lyn Westfall's paintings can be viewed on her website: www.lynwestfall.ca. Also look for Lyn's studio on the Caledon East Studio Tour this September 15 - 16.


Michael Reist is head of the English department at Robert F. Hall Catholic Secondary School in Caledon East. www.michaelreist.ca