Multitalented artist leaves her print everywhere

Nancy Snipper

Myrna Brooks Bercovitch

Myrna Brooks Bercovitch is an NDG artist who excels in experimentation. She crosses over all forms of expressing visual images. She is a printmaker, painter, watercolourist, and pastelist. Her collage and mixed media pieces are presently on show in Agora Gallery in Soho, New York City.

“I’m thrilled that New York is going to display my work for a year. It wasn’t my first choice,” she says, “but I couldn’t get a gallery here to show my collages — I was trying for three years. Curators told me my work was ‘too New York,’ whatever that means, but I took their advice, and went (via email) south of the border.” Her mixed media work on trees was recently shown at Montreal’s Café Volver, and her art has also been shown at the Georges Laoum Gallery (formerly the Montreal Museum of Fine Art store).

Myrna was a long time associate at Gallery Shore on Monkland and at the Saidye Bronfman Centre where she headed the children’s and teens’ art department. She is presently teaching collage at Henri Bradet Centre in NDG, but her soft spot for The Cummings Jewish Centre for Seniors still remains strong.

Kimono and Blue Rose (watercolour, ink)

“I ran the art program there for three years. I loved doing it because the people there learned so much. It was a great way to connect to so many who have always wanted to express themselves through art. As an animator there, my idea was to introduce them to various art forms, develop their curiosity and stimulate imagination. They explored sculpture, jewelry-making, stained glass, and painting.”

She did this with ease, for she’s an eclectic artist. Her pastels of flowers are as inspiring as her watercolours that lyrically portray women draped in kimonos. Her beautiful faces reflect the pensive thoughts of women who seem to rise out of antiquity. Pompeii and Athens come to mind.

Myrna has also taken her printmaking talents to others with her fossil graphs. “I select the plants. I do it with kids and adults. We use my own garden to get the plants and flowers. I grow the ones that leave dyes — begonias, delphiniums, irises — and I also incude the weeds. It’s so much fun.”

Striped Kimono, Striped Landscape (watercolour)

Indeed, this grandmother of five keeps branching out. She’s presently taking classical ballet dance lessons at Studio Biz four times a week — she’s been dancing since 1972. Nothing holds this spirited artist down. She’s even created stage and set designs for choreographers. Now she’s ‘dancing’ her way to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts with her pastel workshops. Still finding time to create mixed media illustrations for Shoshanna Bret Anisman’s children’s book, titled ‘My Grandma Doesn’t Wear a Helmet’, Myrna has just written her own book on the creative process. It’s surprising she finds alone time to paint for herself, but she’s had a lifetime of experience doing that. “From the time I was small, I used to communicate my dreams by escaping from reality through collage and drawing. I found solitude in this. My family was traveling a rocky road which affected me. Fortunately my creative spirit took over. I was lucky.”

Humble by nature, this renaissance woman has embarked on many different paths. After nursing for three years and raising three kids, she spent seven years at the Saidye Bronfman studying the very art forms she now teaches. In 1980, she started formal art education studies, graduating from Concordia University at the age of 42. Nothing stops her desire to learn, through good and bad times. They say what goes around comes around, and this woman rightfully deserves the rewards she’s now reaping. She’s won five international prizes for her drawings and prints, and to date, has been the featured artist in 18 solo shows.

“I am blessed because I get to do what I love create my own way and share it with others.”