Rosemary James Cross is an artist with a lifetime of painting in this community. Last year, as Cross was descending into memory loss and would soon leave her large home filled with art and memorabilia, her friends felt this would be an appropriate time to prepare a retrospective exhibit. As a result, a show at Goward House through the month of June offers a considered selection of 50 canvases from more than 600 paintings which have accumulated in Cross’s studio during her 50 years of practice.
Cross was the daughter of prominent Victoria architect P. Leonard James. In his long career, James designed many significant buildings both private and public (Steamship Terminal, Jubilee Hospital, the Federal Building). He was the practical architect in partnership with the more visionary Frances Rattenbury and among their projects was the Crystal Garden, in its time “the largest area under glass on the continent.” Like the other famous architect in town, Samuel Maclure, James was a talented amateur watercolour painter, often painting the gardens of his lovely home on Tod Road in Oak Bay. It was a cultured home in which young Rosemary grew up.
After graduating from high school, she was brought into the office, working for her father and becoming a capable draughtsperson. But marriage drew her away and she set out with her husband, working and traveling and raising a family. Their search for employment led them to Saskatchewan and to Fredericton, N.B. There, Cross was invited to teach drawing at the Provincial Craft School. As an artist recognition of a sort came to her in Fredericton, but the marriage was not a success and in the early 1978 she returned with her daughter Janet to her hometown of Victoria.
That’s when I met Rosemary James Cross. Her dedication to painting, her forthright manner and her warm sense of humour reminded me of Emily Carr. Cross exhibited in community situations when the opportunity arose and shared her efforts with Group XIV, a group of dedicated amateur artists in Victoria. Les Harper, a graphic designer, was a leader of the group and was joined by Mary Corneille, Ardath Davies and a number of others who met to critique each other’s work and plan group exhibits. Like many groups — Victoria Sketch Club, Federation of Canadian Artists, the Saanich Peninsula Arts and Crafts Society, to name a few — Group XIV provided an outlet for creative people who had no representation in commercial galleries. It is a fact that the majority of artists in Victoria exist in this broad strata of community involvement.
Over the years, Cross developed themes in her work. She traveled in China and India, and everywhere she went architecture was naturally her main focus. Searching for subject matter, she drove across western Canada stopping at heritage sights like the Hat Creek Farm, and savouring small town life. The “onion dome” churches of the Orthodox faith in Alberta were of particular interest to her. She rarely painted “pure” landscape, but usually interpreted the built environment in its context.
Admittedly, she used her photographs as source material, and was never much interested in painting on location. She’d bring her notes back to the rather dim studio she set up in the basement of her home, where a warren of rickety shelves held hundreds of canvases. There she would transform the stark reality of the snapshots into something more expressive, in the process altering the colours and setting the subject free from its constraints and rigid perspective. At best her paintings are informed with a rollicking delight. There is none of the struggle and timidity of the beginner for, as her friend Gordon Clover explained, Rosemary was “a natural.”
Cross reminded me of Emily Carr and, like Carr, she found it almost impossible to market her work. Despite her efforts, there were few opportunities and little encouragement to take her paintings to a wider public. And after the art supplies were paid for, there was little money for marketing. Though most of her paintings never left her studio, she diligently continued working on her craft. Those who take home paintings from her current show will be choosing from her finest work, and will certainly find them enhanced by more sympathetic framing.
In later years, Cross researched and wrote a biography of her father, architect P. Leonard James. It was a labour of love, carefully researched and self-published in 2005. In many public speaking engagements she spoke with pride in her father’s work, and she was subsequently presented with a medal by the Architectural Institute of British Columbia in recognition of her contribution to the field.
Rosemary James Cross is still alive, healthy and well cared for, but her painting days are behind her. Now — before it’s too late! — her friends have created this art show to honour her as she might have wished. Her finest works, carefully hung are here seen in quantity and offered to her friends and admirers at modest prices. Her efforts are properly noted as part of our art history and I expect that we can tell by the smile on her face that she knows her life of painting has not been in vain.
Rosemary James Cross: Retrospective Exhibition
Goward House, 2495 Arbutus Road, 250-477-4401, [email protected]
Artist’s reception today, 1:30 to 3:30 p.m.
Exhibition continues until June 25.