Margaret Florence Ludwig doesn’t care about getting cold, wet or dirty. All she cares about is painting.
Margaret Florence Ludwig’s portraits of Olympic athletes are on display this month in a group exhibit at Toronto’s John B. Aird Gallery.
Ludwig, 81, has been painting and drawing almost as long as she remembers. Her first drawings were of Mickey Mouse or Pluto, and they were so good her mother lectured her about tracing from a book.
Born in Peterborough, Ont., she loves the outdoors almost as much as she loves painting its scenery.
When creating landscapes, she works fast, making use of every beam of sunlight, every glimmer of ice.
When inspired, she can paint for hours, eating only what she stuffed into her pockets in the morning and finishing up to five paintings a day.
“I wear the same clothes all the time. I get paint on myself, and I don’t care because that’s what I like to do,” she said.
Ludwig, a member of the Portrait Society of Canada and the Drawing Society of Canada, has sold her paintings in Canada, the United States and England.
The artist enjoys painting winter landscapes, and has painted in the Antarctic and Greenland. On these trips, some of her colleagues take photos of the landscape, go into their cottages, turn up the heat and paint. Ludwig likes the cold.
“You just get a different spirit in your work than if you’re just clicking away and going back to draw from your digital [photos]… A lot of people say it’s warm [in their cottages], the radio’s on, I don’t want that,” she said.
“I want to think… I’ve got this whole world to myself… You’re actually there, you feel the wind, you feel the sun, you try to get that in your work.”
As a painter, Ludwig enjoys getting away from the city. Apart from Greenland and the Antarctic, she’s also been to Baffin Island, Nunavut.
“Everything is just so fresh and so primitive. You get overwhelmed by it. It’s almost untouched,” she said of these landscapes. “It’s a whole different experience away from the city, away from the smoke.”
Ludwig also enjoys painting portraits. Three of them will be on display in an upcoming exhibit of portraits of Canadian athletes. One is of Petra Burka, a former world champion figure skater, and the other two are of Jennifer Robinson, a figure skater who competed in the 2002 Winter Olympic Games in Salt Lake City. Since Ludwig prefers working with people rather than painting from a photo, both skaters came to pose at her studio.
“I always prefer when they’re alive and in front of you. You have a different relationship with the person. I think it comes out in your work,” she said. “A slight smile, a slight change of light can change their whole personality. It’s such a challenge. It’s so much more interesting [than painting from a photo].”
When painting portraits, Ludwig said her role is to capture the person’s personality, something she can’t do without interacting with her subjects.
“When you’re doing a portrait, you have to try to catch that personality of the individual. When you’re doing a landscape, you’re putting your own personality into it,” she said. “I guess when you’re talking to them beforehand and during their breaks, you get to know them a little better.”
When painting, Ludwig uses oil paints rather than acrylics. She doesn’t usually plan out her paintings with pencil drawings, mainly because she already knows how she wants the finished product to look.
“You can plan, but I just know what I’m going to do,” she said. “I’m sort of a hit or miss person. Not everything you do turns out well.”
As a painter, Ludwig doesn’t have regular business hours. She’ll paint several times a week and has been known to ask her guests or grandchildren, of which she has 13, to pose for her on a whim.
“I don’t know why I’m like this… I’ve done it all my life. I guess it’s just me,” she said.
“Canadian Olympic Athletes: A Dialogue in Art,” presented by the Portrait Society, will be on exhibit at Toronto’s John B. Aird Gallery to March 26, with an opening reception on March 4 from 6 to 8 p.m. For more information, call Linda Litwack at 416-782-7837 or e-mail [email protected].
