​Durham painter returns to Victoria Park Gallery as guest artist through September

Judy Beddoe of Durham has returned to Kincardine with more of her acrylic paintings, featuring nature and landscapes in bold and brilliant colours.

She first showcased her work last fall as the guest artist for the month of October, at the Victoria Park Gallery in downtown Kincardine. Now, her paintings are once again hanging in the guest gallery for the month of September.

Beddoe was raised on farms, first in Stouffville and then just south of Aurora. Her first school is now in Black Creek Pioneer Village. The rest of her growing up was in King City. She came to the Bruce-Grey region in the late 1960s and has lived here ever since, except for a four-year stint in Northern Ireland.

A hairdresser all her life, when she retired, she switched from hair-colouring to painting with watercolours.

“I originally wanted to go to art school,” says Beddoe. “I did a lot of drawing when I was a kid. After retirement, I tried watercolours and liked working with those. Then, I took a course painting skies using acrylics (with Peter John Reid of Chatsworth) and it opened up a whole new world for me.”

Now, most of her work is in acrylics, and she continues to be inspired by nature and landscapes. Often, she will take a photo and paint from it. “I love colour,” she says.

She and her husband have travelled a lot, across the United States and in Ireland and England. In fact, her painting of a sheep looks like one they saw Ireland.

When she’s not busy painting and travelling, she is a passionate gardener. She also used to make and sell a lot of jewellery.

Victoria Park Gallery is located inside the Kincardine Arts Centre in downtown Kincardine. For more information, check the Facebook page at: www.facebook.com/pg/victoriaparkgallerykincardine/posts/.