Joining the spiritual and natural worlds

Peggy Thayer lives in a small two-storey home on Pictou Landing Road. It's quiet and modest, which is, ironically, how one might describe Thayer after a first meeting.
She invites me into her living room, which also serves as her art studio. This she has named Recluse Art Studio; I ask why and she says the name reflects how she sees herself - as someone who tends to shy away from the spotlight.
Her desk sits in a corner of the room. It's a tidy desk, everything is in its rightful place, save for an unfinished painting of a sunrise, painted on deer rawhide, that lies on top of the desk.
Her own paintings hang in frames on the walls. The paintings reflect someone who is highly spiritual, who has a curiosity about creation and a love of nature. One wall in her living room is almost entirely dedicated to paintings of seascapes, and the sun rising on the water. "I'm endlessly fascinated by light on water," she explains, watching as I examine the shrine.
Thayer fished commercially in Pictou Landing for six years. Back then, getting the chance to watch the sun rise was just one of the perks of the job. She points out a particular painting and tells me what inspired her that day.
"That painting comes from a photograph I took one morning," she says. "It had stormed the night before, and usually when it does that it's not a good day for fish, but we went down to the harbour anyway, just to see what it would be like."
"We got in the boat and that's when the sun broke out through the black clouds; it was like solid gold."
Thayer's oil paintings splash with the kind of vibrant colours that demand a viewer's attention. Her paintings reflecting her own spirituality are full of bold colours and brush strokes. These paintings seem to connect a relationship with the spiritual world with a relationship to the natural world.
Her paintings reflecting her spirituality occur spontaneously. When she picks up her paintbrush, she has no idea exactly what she will paint. She lets her intuition tell her how to make her brush strokes. "I just run the paint over the canvas," she says. "That way, I get to watch (the paintings) happen."
In addition to oil painting, Thayer also works in horn, bone and leather to create her artistic pieces. The New Glasgow Library has offered her two-weeks exhibition space, and her paintings will be featured in the library foyer beginning May 12.