Different strokes have always ruled Lynn McCrady's life.
Now at 104 years old, she is still living a colourful life at Jubilee Lodge.
The elder care facility was decorated with flowers, balloons and cupcakes for their artist-in-residence last Friday but she provided much of her own party atmosphere. Although she is hard of hearing and needs a microphone system to communicate effectively, she makes it clear there is still plenty of paint on her brush.
"She would paint daily if she could. She honestly goes through canvases too fast to keep up," said Krista Loukes, program coordinator at the lodge.
The evidence is all around the facility. Her masterpiece is a winter scene of a cabin in the snow being approached by a cowboy on horseback. There is an eagle in flight, a still-life bouquet of flowers, a mountain range landscape, and in the southeast corner of the facility, in the solarium overlooking the city, there is an easel and table permanently at the ready for her next splash of inspiration.
Loukes said McCrady asks the staff and regular visitors to bring her photos and calendar images that she copies from. Once complete, they are put on display around the big rooms of the lodge and often people ask to buy them.
"Art just comes natural. It's in my fingers," she said. "I taught myself. I never had a lesson in painting. I picked up the brush and something told me: 'try this, try that.' It just comes out."
She makes it sound so easy, and for her it is. She suggests trying to apply her particular style of thinking to any endeavor.
"You can go a long way in this world if you think you can," she said. "And ask God to help you. I think I can do almost anything I want to do, if I ask God for help. You can talk to your brain, you know. You can tell it to think something for you. When I go to bed at night I tell my brain 'think of something interesting for me to dream.' You can talk to your mind, and it can grow, I promise. There is invisible power. I don't know anything about it but you just have your mind think it through, and things will go your way."
Call it oversimplified, call it mystical, call it an impulse that outgrew its frame, but McCrady has unquestionably made a mark on the world with her art.
If the proof wasn't clear enough in the paintings around the room, it is certainly embodied in her descendants.
"My mother became a professional painter, my uncle became a professional painter, and I am a professional painter," said her grandson Leif Ostlund. He recently returned to Prince George after living 30 years in Toronto.
"We are all artsy people. I did five years of art training and I've been painting as a profession for the past 30 years, but she has always been wild."
His art career is well established in Ontario but he has never had an exhibition in his hometown. Perhaps that might change now, he said, since he was here and spending time with his unique and inspiring grandmother.
"She has always been spirited and strong," he said. "At 70 she would pick us up and spin us around. She once built a three-storey log home and it ended up on national TV because she was 65 at the time. She is a firebrand. There is always a new enterprise. She went in for a bank loan to start a berry farm at Salmon Valley and the bank made her take a competency test to make sure she wasn't out of her mind. She was insulted, but she flew through the test and got the loan. Then, at 100 years old, she opened her own gallery. It was alongside of the road at Salmon Valley, for people to stop in and buy art."
Ostlund thinks the physiological secret to her longevity might be the rural lifestyle his grandmother always pursued. She was born in Michigan, but a large part of her life was spent on a farm in the Endako area (between Fraser Lake and Francois Lake) and then north of Prince George in the Salmon Valley area.
"She could eat absolutely anything because she just worked every calorie off," he said. "And she always grew a lot of her own food, so it was healthy and plentiful."
For all the celebration of her art now, "she's really more of a carpenter," said Oslund. "Painting was something she did between pounding nails."
Family has always been a focal point of her life, too. Her son Bert is now a resident of Jubilee Lodge as well, and they often spend time together in the common rooms.
"I plan ahead and I believe if you have someone alongside you to work with you, you can go a long way in life," she said.
