derelict

Room with a View – New Painting

April 2, 2011 By Michelle Hendry

Well, I squeaked in on the deadline… You can see a larger version here.

This house has become a powerful muse. This place has an aura that I can barely explain. Over the last 18 months, as I uncovered the story behind this abandoned and derelict Muskoka house, the presence of the people have faded and the house itself seems to speak with increasing strength.

When I first went out there in the Spring of 2009, it gave me a single painting. When I returned for another it seemed to tell me I could only have more of these ‘gifts’ if I told its story – and only then.

For “Yellow Door”, it whispered with insistence and light. With “Window Seat”, it gave me a room that I could sit in for hours and watch the sun move across the floor. It challenged me to do the architectural “Waiting” and to think about the people who lived in its rooms and looked out its windows. In “Room with a View” it has revealed its own secret nature and my place in its world – to really see it.

This arrangement between us seemed to allow me to not only discover, layer, by layer, its incredibly rich past, but also its current nature and the tremendous beauty in it.

This house sees many visitors, some destructive, many just curious and they would say. “There is nothing here”. The place has been stripped clean of doors, woodwork and hardware; the windows, shattered, the walls are weathered and the greenery, overgrown. To me, it a house of secrets that only I can see.

Last October, I took an excerpt from my book, laminated it and posted it inside the house, so that future visitors might know its pedigree and perhaps see a little of the magic that they might, otherwise, overlook.

Scottish Settlement in Muskoka

April 14, 2010 By Michelle Hendry

I finally got back out to see the Roxborough Church (St. Peter’s Anglican) with the camera on Tuesday after accidentally discovering it on the weekend. It seems I am the last person in Muskoka to find this little gem of a Church in the wilderness. I think this one is even smaller than Vankoughnet’s St. Stephen’s. This church is still very active and its neighbours are year round, many of which descend from the earliest settlers.This church is a relative latecomer, built in 1933.

A few miles further down the road, the Fraserburg Church is now a United, but, I am willing to bet it started out as a Presbyterian. It is much larger and sits on the edge of a community that had to fight to get recognition. Both Roxborough and Fraserburg are towns in Scotland, attesting to the large concentration of Scottish settlers, one of which was William Fraser.

Derelict houses are in great number here and have largely succumbed to the heavy snows of many Muskoka winters. I took a few shots of one out on the snowmobile trail that I have been watching collapse over the last 7 years. When I first discovered it, I had no camera and when I finally was able to take a photo the roof was broken. Sometime over the last 18 months, it has utterly collapsed.

While taking photographs of the last house I found on this particular trip, a curious neighbour stopped and chatted with me. A furniture maker, he know everybody in the area, including a lady who had grown up in this Fraserburg farmhouse (above). According to him, this farm was held in the same family since the 1860’s. Checking the Atlas, I can guess as to the lady’s maiden name, however, I hope to get into direct contact with her this summer to learn more about the history of this oft forgotten and very unique Muskoka town.

I am a couple weeks late getting into the season this year, not because my calendar is wrong, but, because the ice has been out for two weeks and Spring came early. I am excited that the season has begun again. There is lots to see before the forests hide their secrets for another year. I have been slowly plugging away on “Crystal’s Room” with several distractions slowing me further. I am getting there…

This last image is of a roadside stream that I admire every time I pass. I thought I’d share.

Window Seat & McMichael Opening

October 18, 2009 By Michelle Hendry

Featured at the McMichael Autumn Art Sale, October 23-25, 2009

The McMichael Show opens at the end of this week. I will be at the Gallery from 6 -10 pm on Friday, October 23rd. I hope to see many of you there! The will be free parking on the opening night event. Details can be found on my website.

The Livingstone House

“Window Seat” (above) and the “Yellow Door” (below) are both from a derelict farm house near Bracebridge that was originally owned by a Scottish immigrant and carpenter, Neil Livingstone. Mr. Livingstone came to Muskoka in around 1861 at the age of 40 and died here of pneumonia in March of 1905 at the age of 84.

Neil Livingstone was a skilled carpenter and became a prominent contractor of public buildings in the Town of Bracebridge before the turn of the century. He was responsible for the original Registry Office in 1877 and for the completion of the Town Hall in 1881. Only the Tower from the original Town Hall remains today. Livingstone also won the contract for the completion of the Dominion Hotel. It is still standing, however, I am under the impression that only the main floor is in use. I would love to get a look at the upper floors!

Without looking at the records, there is mention of a building permit for a house on the Livingstone property in 1891. The 1879 Muskoka Atlas shows two building there previous. I am going to guess that they were a barn and a homestead and that the house built in 1891 is the one that stands today.

Looking at the architectural detail on the house, I was not surprised to discover Mr. Livingstone was a carpenter. There are very few rural homes in this area with such great attention to detail, a curved staircase with a complicated arched ceiling and stunning hardwood that is rock solid even after nearly 15 years exposed to the elements. Most farmhouses in this region were very basic and without much detail. Farming in Muskoka was often an impossible business due to the rocky terrain, so few would have had the wealth to build a brick house with so much elegant carpentry.

I have yet to make the trip to the Land Registry Office to determine who inherited the house in the early part of the last century. I am hoping to discover if Neil Livingstone had any children. There is no mention of them in local publications, nor mention of a wife. For me, there is a distinct female aura about the place. It makes me curious to know who else lived there before the farm was sold to commercial interests. That information should be in the next Newsletter in mid to late November.

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I will be continuing my Muskoka Interiors series over the coming months. I plan to have another from the Fleger House by the end of November. New events, plans for 2010 and paintings will be in the November/December issue of my Newsletter. You can sign up to receive the newsletter here!

Afternoon Light at Lavender

September 26, 2009 By Michelle Hendry

The changes in the weather and the season play havoc with my sinuses. It has been a tough week of migraines and other discomforts which slowed the painting process significantly – but – it is done!

Lavender is a little hamlet of mostly farms just outside Creemore, Ontario. I met artist Peter Adams last year and he helped me find this little derelict house. It was late in the afternoon – around 5:30 pm – and I had been shooting for half an hour. I was walking back to the car and turned around to stunning light coming from behind the house. When I looked at my reference photographs later, only the one I used for this painting made the cut. I have asked around to see if anyone knows about its history, but so far, nothing yet…

Next week, the Livingstone house – history and a window seat…

Room with a View – New Painting

Scottish Settlement in Muskoka

Window Seat & McMichael Opening

Afternoon Light at Lavender

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