Days after the shooting tragedy in Portapique, NS on April 18 and 19, a Kentville, N.S., woman spotted a piece of art online that spoke to her.
It was a picture of a girl on a beach holding a Nova Scotian flag with a beautiful sunset behind her. The sunset in the piece of art re
Nancy Henry. – File
minded Nancy Henry of the sunsets that occurred the night of April 20.
“The pictures people posted of the sunsets of that night that stayed with me,” says Henry.
Then, when she saw a picture on Facebook of a painting of a sunset, a beach, a girl and the flag, she knew she had to share it. When she did, it “went crazy.”
“So many people shared it, so I knew then the painting was on a journey of its own,” she says.
This oil painting by Bob Brasset, a fine art painter from Antigonish, N.S. who now lives in Victoria, B.C., spoke to the hearts of Nova Scotians following the recent shooting tragedy. He says it has a theme of compassion and heartbreak that all Nova Scotians experienced.
When it showed up on the Colchester-Supporting our Communities Facebook group, someone commented that it was a shame the artist wasn’t credited. This sent Henry on a hunt to find out more about the image that touched so many people. She posted an appeal for any information, saying all she could remember was that the artist was from Antigonish.
Henry’s search finally led her to Bob Brasset, a fine art painter in Victoria, B.C.
Brasset was born in Antigonish and attended school and university there, studying art in an after-school program at Mount Saint Bernard College on the St F.X. campus, before making his way to the West Coast to further his studies. Brasset worked as a practicing counseling psychologist and family therapist in Vancouver. It wasn’t until the 1980s that he started calling himself a fine art painter.
Bob Brasset shows off one of his most recent paintings.
Brasset says in his paintings, he tries to convey and contrast the beauties of the East Coast and the West Coast, as he’s lived an equal amount of time on both coasts. He likes to convey beauty and joy and the celebration of the natural world that surrounds us.
“I have very fond memories of Nova Scotia, and vivid memories of my own growing up experience there,” he says. “I like to express particular moments which have particular emotions for me.”
Artist Bob Brasset, of Victoria, B.C., painted this picture prior to the recent tragedy in Nova Scotia. Now it seems appropriate because it reminds him of a young lady playing on her fiddle a lament for her native province and its people, he says.
The painting that caught Henry’s attention wasn’t painted in response to the recent tragedy in Nova Scotia. It was originally commissioned by Phyllis DD McDonald, a highland dancer from Antigonish, to be given to her daughter, Jeanne, who now lives in Florida.
When the tragedy happened, Jeanne posted a picture of the painting on Facebook and it got a lot of response, says Brasset.
“Looking at this painting reminds us to join our hearts, our hands and compassion with heartfelt prayer for all those experiencing the tragedy in Nova Scotia,” he says.
After this initial painting was posted, Brasset was approached by other people who wanted him to send more paintings to them and asked for permission to share them online. A few days later, Brasset sent out three or four more paintings that had the same theme of compassion and heartbreak for the tragedy that all Nova Scotians experienced.
Bob Brasset hopes his paintings will help comfort Nova Scotians.
Brasset says he was not expecting such a response to his paintings and it was a real surprise to him. He hopes, however, that these painting will bring comfort and consolation to people in his home province.
LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.
More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.
The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.
They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.
“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”
It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.
Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.
“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.
