@BramptonLibrary: Watercolour House Portraits

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About

Brampton Library has eight locations. Due to COVID 19 health restrictions, we are unable to host the activities at our branches. However, we invite you to join us at our virtual platform to enjoy Culture Days online presentations from our talented community.

My watercolour house portraits focus on portraying images of real homes. I feel like a home is a character in a family’s life; it isn’t just a structure, but it was for people to live in. And it is exceptionally important to me to capture the feeling of the house and how it is a vital part of a community and a member of the family who resides inside.

Homes that are planned for major renovations are a particular interest of mine because they inform the community how the neighbourhood was originally created. The idea of what is considered as progress shows that original construction is currently seen as irrelevant. It is important to document the changing landscape by using the city archives to research the history of the home and finding out who built the home, when it was built, who were the first homeowners, and any other relevant details, and include that information in the impressions of these homes. I like to find original photos or take my own pictures if the homes are still standing, and use them to build the plans for my watercolour portraits.

Since 2020 our homes have become central for us. We were stuck in them, took respite in them, relaxed in them, worked in them, cleaned and sanitized them, repaired them, spruced them up … and in turn, our homes have sheltered us from the elements, kept us safe from the pandemic, and brought our families closer together. My watercolour house portraits attempt to honour our relationships with our homes.

Links

• Art on Mill Street Website artonmillstreet.ca
• Instagram - Art on Mill Street instagram.com

Organizer

Art on Mill Street

Kimberley Popoff is a self-taught Canadian watercolour artist and achieved her BComm and MBA from McMaster University in 1994. Her day job for the past thirty years has been in technology project management, but she loves being creative in her spare time. Kimberley has shown her work at the Brampton Downtown Library, a local Italian restaurant and joined Art-Beat with a live drawing exhibition at a local café. Her watercolour house portraits have been on display in multiple private collections since 2018.

Her work explores the significance of the house as a character in the family unit, while also documenting the history of the neighbourhood. Of particular importance is capturing house portraits prior to demolition in the name of progress; depicting a neighbourhood at a moment in time.

Kimberley Popoff was born in 1967 in Brampton and still works and lives with her husband and two young-adult children in downtown Brampton.