Art adorns each wall – and not just one work – a variety of pieces all arranged in Maureen’s own style. An ancient image from India of an advancing lion hangs beside a mediaeval-looking portrait, which is next to a Spanish painting of a Mardi Gras party with children in costume.

Maureen is a world traveller. For work, holidays and time with family in France, California and Nepal, she has circled the globe. As she pours herbal tea from a Moroccan silver tea set, I ask how she started collecting. She laughs and points out two of her very first pieces: a bowl containing a pyramid of ceramic eggs, each so smooth and flawless you want to stroke it; and a sombre-coloured portrait of a severely-coiffed woman who looks as if nothing could surprise or dismay her. Maureen bought the portrait at a small antique store in Old Ottawa South. “All I know about her is that she’s Mrs. Matthews from Montreal.”

One wall of the living room features six framed posters from San Francisco’s psychedelic period. They are original posters from the famous Fillmore West – Otis Rush, The Doors, Big Brother and the Holding Company (Janis Joplin’s band) – sent by a friend then studying at Berkeley. Maureen shows me another poster hanging just inside the door. It’s of the Jefferson Airplane, where the plane looks like a rather plump fish with a female figure protruding from it like the prow of an old-fashioned ship.

Near that poster hangs a portrait Maureen bought from a woman artist in Hanoi. It portrays a delicately-featured woman with a russet headpiece and bright gold ear hoops. “Not long after I got home,” Maureen says with a mock-shudder, “two women were arrested for importing Vietnamese paintings filled with drugs.”

In the bedroom is a treasure from a trip to China in 1982. As head of Status of Women Canada, Maureen was invited by the Chinese to bring a delegation of Canadian women to talk with their Chinese counterparts. “My colleagues were not amused when I bought this early in our trip,” says Maureen as she points to a large wicker ostrich standing in a corner of the room. “We had to haul it everywhere.”

Many of the paintings come from the Portal Gallery in London, which specializes in works by contemporary British artists. These lend some of the more exotic touches to the collection: a large monkey with an intense dark face; three brightly-coloured parrots; and a mixed group of jungle animals huddled together. These, and small reproductions hung in the kitchen under the cupboards, are all works of a British artist named Lizzie Riches.

“I like pictures that tell a story,” says Maureen. Her works by the late Vancouver artist Jack Akroyd are highly-detailed surfaces with numerous characters going about their separate businesses, often involving mysterious pieces of equipment.

“His own story was very sad. When living in Japan, he fell in love with a Japanese woman and they wanted to marry. But her father stole her away. Akroyd went into a deep depression and, for years, all his paintings included a black hole with him climbing out.”

Not all art is in picture form. A wooden pig from an antique shop in Devon, England, sits on a buffet. He looks as if he’s smiling. “Remarkably good-natured for a pig who decorated a butcher shop,” quips Maureen. In a corner of the living room stands a candy-coloured rocket ship, pointing straight up. A curved door in its midsection opens to reveal the likeness of the artist, the late Ottawa-based artist Victor Tolgesy, arms folded on the edge of the opening.

As President of Canada’s International Development Research Centre for eleven years, Maureen travelled to Africa, Asia and Latin America. Asked what she brought home from those travels, she replies, “Not much. Many objects which are beautiful in their home settings don’t translate well to a Canadian home. Also, by then I was travelling with one carry-on bag, and there really wasn’t time to shop.” She disappears to pull out what she did bring back – a spectacular shawl from India, with paisley scrolls of metallic silver on a deep navy ground.



From lucky finds to gallery picks, from the vivid dreamlike works of former neighbour Derek Aylen to an early painting by her son Martin (now achieving artistic recognition in Europe), Maureen has built a deeply personal, humorous and absolutely distinctive collection. Her walls really do talk. — Written by Jean van Loon