Many Canadian dreams involved facing off at Maple Leaf Gardens. Corey Hardeman wasn't a hockey player but she still gets to compete at the elite level in the historic Toronto arena.
Her stick is a paintbrush, her puck a pallet of colour, her competition a lineup of other artists from all over the country in a one-night, winner-take-all showdown.
"The audience will vote to determine who deserves to be crowned as the best live painter in Canada," said a statement issued by officials of the 2014 Art Battle National Championship.
Hardeman has already bested three other sets of challengers to earn her easel at the nationals. First she won the regional live painting tournament held at Groop Gallery with nine contestants. That got her into the provincial level, where she had two rounds of competition - the preliminaries and the finals - all in one night at the Vogue Theatre.
"Winning that was incredible. It was such a shock and a thrill," said Prince George's Hardeman. "We were in this lovely theatre, there were 400 people watching, and a commentator doing play-by-play," she explained. "Its a timed event. Everyone has access to the same colour pallet. It's all acrylic. You aren't allowed to build any reference material, no sketches, nothing. You have an 18 by 24 canvass and 20 minutes. Nobody tells you a theme, you paint whatever is in your head. It's your vision. The people in attendance vote."
During the preliminary round Hardeman chose to paint a rabbit on the run.
"I thought it needed to be dynamic, have movement. It wasn't a cute bunny, it was a rabbit full-out running and the whites of its eyes."
There was strategy in the image she chose for the second round, too - a school of trout, this time in a 24 by 36 canvass - but it almost got sabotaged by her haste in poor lighting.
"The canvasses were really well lit, but the pallet area was quite dark," she said. "So I actually went for a particular colour and when I got it back to the canvass the brown I wanted turned out to be purple but its the darkest colour in the spectrum we had so I just toned it down with some gold, and pretended I knew what I was doing."
She did know what she was doing, to a large degree. She is a professional painter, and a teacher of painting. She was the Community Arts Council's artist in residence this past year, and she practiced the images she wanted to use in competition. It helped ease the jitters and stress of rapid-fire art with cash and prestige on the line.
"They count down from 10 when it's time to stop, and when they get to zero, it's brushes down," she said. "I didn't know I did it, but when I watched the video later, I was like a rodeo calf-roper when the calf's legs are tied - my arms shot up 'done' like the cowboys do."
She was initially nervous at the Vancouver level. She was confident in her painting skills, but the winner was by audience vote. She knew maybe six people in the big crowd.
"All these Vancouver artists were really well known, but once everyone was done and I looked around, I didn't want to be cocky even just with myself, but I did think ''wow, I actually might have a shot' and then one of the tech guys passed by and said 'I've seen a lot of these. You've got this one.' And when they called my name it was just mind-blowing. And this is not the way you normally paint, it's really dynamic, and it was with acrylics not oils like I usually use. Boy was it a lot of fun."
Each round of competition involved auctioning off the paintings, with the organizers getting half the proceeds to put towards the event costs and half going to the artist.
Does Hardeman have a secret weapon? A mental edge?
"I paint fast anyhow," she confessed. "It's an advantage that comes with having four children. I always feel I have limited time. I sketch and paint really quickly. And I look for movement in the paintings I do anyway, so that is best done when you're in a rush, but just so we're clear, I don't usually paint THAT quickly. Twenty minutes is aaaaahhhhhh."
All those factors are now amplified. The winning painter from each province, plus some others invited by the organizers, will line up in Toronto for national supremacy.
An audience of up to 2,000 is expected.
Hardeman departed Thursday and the competition is Saturday. Audiences can watch live via internet starting at 4 p.m. Prince George time at www.artbattle.ca.
