Marjorie Hembroff

About the artist

Marjorie was born in Deloraine, Manitoba. Her childhood was spent on a farm, three miles from Regent, Manitoba and attended school at Bidford, a one room school. Winnipeg was her home from 1962 till 1971. Calgary was her home since 1971 and then Strathmore.

As a child and young adult she enjoyed doing a variety of crafts, including embroidery, and sewing. She was taught to do embroidery work as a preschool activity. During elementary school she enjoyed doing paint by numbers and had an active imagination. As a young mother, she learned to sew and continued doing embroidery using more complicated patters. She also enjoyed a variety of crafts. A lot of these crafts were used to create gifts for family members.

In Calgary when her youngest children were growing up; she attended several art related courses including, Preston, wet in wet oil technique taught by Alex Preston, Correspondence course through ICS Canadian Ltd., and Fundamentals I and II at the Alberta College of Art, extension program. Even though she took a few art classes, she has been mainly self-taught. Several artists have been a major influence in her painting style but went on to develop her own unique style. Some of her work has an impressionistic style while other pieces are very realistic. She has  attended several art demos held at group meetings and a watercolour workshop instructed by Katie Morris. She participated in a few outdoor painting sessions but preferred to work indoors-using photos as a reference.

In February of 1990, she joined the Mount Pleasant Artists Group, (now called Crescent View Artists’ Association). She has been active on several group committees since joining as well as participating in their group shows. She joined another art group called the Garden Art Group for one year.

Since moving to Strathmore she has attended a few workshops at Wheatland Artists Association. The majority of her recent art work has been done for her picture books that are self published.

Group Shows

Kaleidoscope Art Gallery - 1990

Crescent Heights Community Centre(Spring and Fall Shows) - 1991-2000

Other Shows

Studio Café - Dec. 1991-May 1992

Gallery 826 - June 1992

Artist Statement

I inherited my art talent from an ancestor, who was a print maker. His talent has been passed down through the generations. Various family members display different forms of creativity from painting backdrops in theaters, cartooning and paintings.

Growing up in a rural area helped to develop my imagination and taught me to appreciate the beauty in my mother’s flowerbeds and surrounding landscape. My imagination helped to create many new activities out of a few simple objects and a creative way to solve problems.

Many emotions are expressed in my paintings that would otherwise remain buried inside. A lot of times artwork has been therapeutic for me; helping through many challenging times by releasing built up tensions and emotions. There has always been an inner force that drives me to create paintings, resulting in a feeling of serenity. In later years as an artist, my love of animals and nature has been expressed in sketches and paintings using photo’s as a reference. My own animals are often a source of inspiration.  I painted animals on stones using acrylic paints. The different stone shapes often suggest animals. I find it exciting when a stone comes to life with some basic sketching and brush strokes.