Tea and war
For over 40 years, in Ottawa, Newfoundland and abroad, Karen Bailey has chronicled the goodness of ordinary Canadians.
“I paint people at work,” says Karen Bailey. That’s how she came to be rolling sandwiches in a church kitchen in Ottawa one day, alongside the 70- and 80-year-old women whose portraits she was painting. That’s also how, the next day, she was flying to Afghanistan, entering the Kandahar Air Field in a sandstorm to document Canadian military medical personnel at work.
For over four decades, Karen Bailey has painted Canadians who serve. “From calligrapher to heraldic artist, illustrator to courtroom artist, portrait painter to war artist, ultimately I am a visual storyteller.” Taken together, her work forms a unique collage of what it is to be Canadian in both the historic moments and the ordinary ones. The people in her portraits are vibrant, built of many colours. They’re the kind of people you could be neighbours with; good, invisible people who serve behind the scenes.
From kitchens to a sandstorm
Bailey’s parents were Anglican and deeply involved in volunteer work, values that Bailey carried into her art career. In 2007 Bailey returned to her parents’ church, St. Thomas the Apostle, to document the women behind the scenes. “For over 40 years the ladies have met to make sandwiches, bake, brew pots of tea, arrange flowers, and serve at gatherings after a funeral, the Christmas and Easter “Care & Share Lunch” and the annual June “Garden Party”. This activity is mirrored in large and small communities across Canada.”
It can take up to three years for Bailey to complete a series. In that time, she is with the “sitters”, the subjects of her portraits, painting them in their workplace, asking them to sit for her in her studio, or occasionally working off of reference photos. “There is an enormous amount of editing that goes on as a painter, a winding process to find the essence of one’s subject. Like an elastic band, I allow myself to be stretched then return to home base. Then begin again.”
In the midst of the Blanche Dot Doris series (named for the church women), Bailey was called to Afghanistan as a war artist. “I suffer motion sickness so Afghanistan was the last place on earth I wanted to go.” But when she heard about the Canadian military medical personnel at Role 3 MMU, “I knew I had to use my skills as an artist to help tell their story.”
“The journey to and from Afghanistan was more harrowing than being in the hospital setting –the noisy, cramped Hercules plane flew from Camp Mirage, Dubai into Kandahar Air Field in the midst of a sandstorm,” Bailey recalls. When she arrived, “I wasn’t prepared for the speed and intensity with which the hospital staff work. The only folks who had time to pose for a drawing were the patients who were generally immobile and the Afghan interpreters on a break from translating. I sketched the patients with their permission and photographed the personnel at work to use as reference.”
After returning to Canada, Bailey would spend the next two years developing the paintings that make up her series Triage. She was one of very few Canadian women artists to enter the operating theatre in Kandahar, and her paintings show the interaction between staff and patients. “Whether in the tenderness of a nurse cleaning the tracheotomy of a teenaged blast victim, a four-year-old boy undergoing surgery, technicians preparing a patient in halo traction for an x-ray (see April 3, page 15 CC), or the intensity of doctors on their morning rounds, my paintings speak to both the trauma experienced by the Afghan patients and the commitment of these dedicated medical workers,” Bailey wrote about her work. “My paintings convey stories of sudden trauma and slow recovery.”
Simultaneously to Triage, Bailey continued her portraits of the stalwart church women. “I was inspired by their determination to maintain this tradition and by their strong sense of duty, not unlike the military medical personnel I met in Kandahar. These remarkable church women grew up in a different era and their acts of service have largely disappeared from the ecclesiastic milieu. Many of these women are still performing these duties, albeit with bent backs and arthritic hands.”
Over the years as Bailey volunteered alongside the church ladies, military medical personnel from Kandahar would sit for portraits in her studio when they returned to Canada. Both series are complete but those interactions continue. “Over the years I kept in touch with one of the Afghan interpreters I sketched at Role 3. “Tony”, the code name by which I knew him, was on my mind every time Afghanistan was in the news and my concern deepened as the Taliban increased their vicious hold over the country. In 2021 “Tony”, his wife and six children fled Afghanistan. After a harrowing escape, the family are now safely settled in Ottawa, working and attending school. When we meet, I feel as if I am dreaming – I never imagined I would see “Tony” again or ever have the opportunity to meet his family.”
The paradox of tea
Bailey’s art school days began at 14, when she enrolled in a calligraphy night class. Her interest in medieval history was sparked by Franco Zeffirelli’s film Brother Sun, Sister Moon on the life of St. Francis of Assisi. She studied Calligraphy, Heraldry, Illumination and Bookbinding at the Reigate School of Art & Design in England. Over forty years later, Bailey says her art has evolved but she maintains the “meticulous approach” she formed in art school. “One can’t escape oneself – art acts as a mirror of the artist,” she explained. “All painting is a form of self-portraiture and echoes my life interests along the way.”
Bailey’s series Tea / Leaves was inspired by the contents of a small brown leather suitcase she discovered: photos of her in-laws’ extended family enjoying tea in a Scottish garden. Tucked alongside them were black and white photos of British children in India. “My husband Iain was a Raj Orphan born in India,” says Bailey. Raj Orphans were children sent back to Britain while their parents worked in India. “His father managed a tea garden in Assam, and at an early age Iain and his sister were sent back to Scotland to be educated. They very rarely saw their parents during childhood. His story is painful and familiar to many of the children born in the British Empire.” Tea / Leaves explores the paradox of how tea can gather families and split them. “Iain is my life partner and it was important to document his narrative through my art to help me better understand his history. Only after painting someone (or something) do I really feel I’ve begun to know them.”
I can’t help noticing that many of Bailey’s paintings capture moments juxtaposed against complex backgrounds: Canada’s presence in war zones, Britain’s colonial past, our exploitation of the animals we rely on, homelessness and poverty. That’s why it fascinates me how her paintings inverse our narratives. In a portrait Bailey completed last year of The Ottawa Mission (a shelter for the homeless founded in 1907) Andrew and Jesse are folding towels. The washing machines behind them are sketched in 2-D, but the men – and the towels – are built of paint into 3-D. Andrew and Jesse’s work literally pulls warmth and substance into the room. They’re building a hospitable world with each towel they fold. It’s a repeated technique in Bailey’s work; the background is lightly sketched and the person in the foreground, captured in a simple moment of serving, takes precedence.
“I paint my world,” Bailey said. “My images tell not only the story of those portrayed but also illustrate my life and beliefs. It is about finding a meeting point and the inherent goodness of those living around us. After all, we are more alike than we are unalike.”
“It is about finding a meeting point and the inherent goodness of those living around us. After all, we are more alike than we are unalike.”
Finding sitters in a post office
In 2016, Bailey left Canada’s capital for the country’s edges. Invited by a client to visit Fogo Island off the northeast coast of Newfoundland, Bailey found sitters for portraits at the post office, the autumn roast beef supper and the Anglican church. “Thirteen people graciously agreed to participate, some visited my temporary studio to sit for a portrait while others I painted in their home. The islanders are welcoming, generous and, being so isolated from the mainland, they understand the value of community.” Two years later, Bailey returned for another month to paint the landscape. “I discovered that both the people and the landscape of this remote island are intrinsically linked and inspired me in equal measure.” Bailey is still waiting to exhibit these paintings on Fogo Island, “where the work truly belongs.”
