Cowichan cabin is artist’s canvas
Artist turns cabin into her canvas
Nestled on a gentle incline that slopes down to the water of Cowichan Bay, this small cottage was one of several cabins originally built along the protected shoreline eight or more decades ago. Today it is the home of artist Bev Thompson, who treats the building inside and out like one of her canvases. The exterior is a sunny vision in lemon yellow, while inside she has filled her rooms with colour, paintings, etchings, books and collectibles from decades of travelling and working around the world.
For six years, Thompson lived and taught in Nepal. She goes back almost every year to work with the Glasswaters Foundation there — a group that supports the arts and seeks to protect the environment, promote health and alleviate poverty in global communities.
It is a mission Thompson feels strongly about. While working there, she spent five years studying with prominent Nepalese printmaker Seema Shankar Shah, learning the meticulous and demanding art of etching.
“I first went to Nepal in 2001 and loved it so much I decided to stay,” she said.
Many of Thompson’s prints and etchings hang on the walls of her east-facing home, into which morning light pours lavishly, as well as afternoon sun, which adds to the intensity of her yellow walls.
Thompson also loves to garden and enjoys the balance of creativity inside and out. She combines the two at the back of her big property where, under the shade of an expansive willow tree, is an old shed that houses her printing press.
The building almost disappears under its fluffy fringe of willow branches.
“My garden is large because my house is very small,” said the artist, who also has a studio in Victoria’s Chinatown.
When she moved into her cottage 25 years ago, which, she believes, might have once been surrounded by an orchard, there were lots of renovation projects to undertake.
For one thing, she found the bathroom was too small, even for a modest, 900-square-foot house.
Thompson almost doubled its size by taking down a wall and incorporating an outside woodshed into the area that now holds a large chest of drawers from Scotland and a broad table under a wide horizontal window that was formerly a French door. She kept the original cast-iron tub and sink.
“This room used to have no windows and was painted brown, and, like the rest of the house, there was layer upon layer of shag carpeting everywhere. I tore it all up, rescued the old wooden floors and redid them.”
In the bathroom, she laid down lino over the uneven surface she exposed below the carpet. Friends gave her a stainedglass window that she installed in an interior wall between the bathroom and laundry room.
“There is no heat in the bathroom and a friend suggested I keep this glass window open, which works perfectly.”
Thompson added cedar to the ceiling, for a touch of saunastyle.
Next door, in the utility room she made an important trade-off. “I was short of space and it was hard to fit everything in, so I got rid of the dryer and added the fridge.”
In the kitchen, she painted over the blue walls with a shade of light yellow and added brick red trim to cabinets for a punch of warmth.
Behind the propane range, she used the same strong red on the narrow brick chimney that used to serve the wood-burning stove. She replaced that function, however, by installing a straight-line pipe over the stove, which now draws much better and helps heat the whole house, with the aid of two small electric heaters.
Thompson undertook one of her biggest improvements after a winter of heavy rains.
“This house was originally built as a summer place, so people would move here for the warm season. There aren’t many left, only about five in this bay.”
Because it was a seasonal cottage, it had no foundation. During the winter, the ground often became so saturated that the house would sink in the corner where the bedroom is. (It used to be a porch, but was later walled in to make a room.)
“The floor of the bedroom would drop and the whole house would lean. I’d have to put books under the bed to make it level,” Thompson said with a laugh.
To fix the situation, she had the house jacked up and new footings placed under the home. She also added new drainage in the garden, “where it would become so wet it was like a rice field.”
Talking about rice fields, although born in southern Alberta, Thompson has always had a yen for the East. She travelled there, and to other exotic destinations, extensively, teaching English as a second language in Kathmandu and also French.
“It is easier to be an artist in Nepal than here because it is not as expensive to live there, so you have more time to work on art,” she said.
She also lived in Mali for three years while working on water and health projects with the World University Service of Canada, and spent a couple of summers in Mongolia teaching children. Bilingual in French and English, and competent in Nepali and Fulani, Thompson has also travelled throughout Turkey, Senegal, Ghana and Burkina Faso, to name just a few countries.
Never one to sit still, besides working on her garden and doing her art, Thompson is working with a Japanese artist to learn the delicate technique of printing on silk kimonos, with hand-carved pieces of wood dipped in pastel paints.