Duane Hicks
Former Fort Frances resident Doris Dittaro’s art was a winner at the recent 2015 Canada Winter Games in Prince George, B.C.
Dittaro’s watercolour painting, “Home from the Rink,” featuring two boys walking through the snow after playing hockey on an outdoor rink, was one of a select few images chosen for VIP gifting cards for guests at the Games, which ran from Feb. 12-March 1.
“It was a total surprise,” said Dittaro, who is the sister of local resident Ruth Caldwell.
“I was one of eight entries out of over 100 artist who applied to be made into cards.
“They were made into these VIP gifting cards given out to thousands of dignitaries and participants,” she added.
“Five hundred prints went out to the visitors and I was given 100.”
Dittaro, 87, said the Canada Winter Games, which brought many thousands of people into Prince George from across Canada, “was a big and exciting event for our city.”
“Home from the Rink” may be familiar to patrons of the Fort Frances Public Library.
A print of it was hung in the former library for at least 20 years, and it now has a spot in the new one.
Dittaro painted “Home from the Rink” back in the 1970s.
She and six of her closest artist friends in Prince George had formed The Milltown Artists, and got together to create
a calendar for Papyrus Printing.
Dittaro’s contribution to the calendar was “Home from the Rink.”
She said the painting of the two boys was inspired by real life. She had seen two neighbourhood boys, James and Jamie, trudging through the snow on their way home from the rink.
She took a photo of them through the window of her home in Prince George.
In exchange for their contributions, the printer gave each artist 100 prints of their artwork.
Years later, Dittaro gifted one of her prints to the library here.
Currently, it hangs high up in the northwest corner of the children’s department—next to a second print of hers depicting children playing on an old refurbished fire truck at Fort George Park in Prince George.
Caldwell, who was a children’s librarian at the library here for many years, said she is proud of her sister.
“There are a lot of homes in Fort Frances that have her work hanging on their walls,” she remarked.
“Doris was good to send acknowledgments to parents when new babies were born,” added Caldwell.
“She would paint a little painting that was put in the children’s nursery.”
Dittaro also had a painting of the Rainy Lake Mermaid featured in a 2002 exhibit at the Fort Frances Museum.
“[The mermaid’s] not very far from our cottage on Rainy Lake,” noted Caldwell.
“From a photograph, she painted that mermaid and on it, she put my poem, ‘The Mermaid,’” Caldwell added.
Looking ahead, Caldwell said she and her sister may work on putting together a collection of Caldwell’s poems,
with illustrations by Dittaro, as a family keepsake.
“She reminded [me] I’ve been procrastinating when it comes to that,” Caldwell laughed.
Dittaro has been a mainstay of the Prince George art scene since the 1970s, when she founded the Studio 2880 Artists’ Workshop, which still is going today.
She has exhibited her paintings with the B.C. Festival of the Arts, the Northwest Traveling Exhibition, and at the Two Rivers Gallery and Studio 2880 Artist Workshop in Prince George, B.C.
They also have appeared at the Royal Museum in Victoria, B.C.
