05/12/2026
Here's a tale I loved telling, as it appears in "Outskirts of Ordinary" — my latest book. Linda White Holloway is an artist of great imagination and depth of heart. Order a signed copy online, or check out my upcoming tour dates to purchase in person here: www.abandonedroadsNS.com
DREAMS & DREAMS
For six years, I ran an art gallery in my hometown. From the birth of 2012 till the dying days of 2017, five days a week were spent in the confines of little Low Tide Gallery (Queen Street, Bridgetown). It was a tiny place, about the size of an average bedroom, every inch of wall and shelf space filled with artwork. I never refused an artist in all my time there. At one point, I represented thirty individuals, with as many as two hundred separate items on display.
It was by far the most social period of my life, but not without struggles. It took my first eight months to make a single sale, and about a year into the experience, inactivity started catching up with me. I've always had lower back issues, but a desk job made them nearly-constant, and sciatica led to the most physically unpleasant period of my life. It never fully faded until a year after closing.
One of the greatest upsides to those years was the artwork of Linda White Holloway — showing up with her wonderful artwork in paper, painted and glued on canvas, composing wonderfully whimsical and imaginative scenes. There were storybook animals and colourful streetscapes, and one particular piece I loved of a 1920s flapper with a birdcage earring. In all those years at Low Tide, that was the only piece I ever purchased for myself. The woman behind it was just as much a pleasure to be around. She'd come through my door with a light in her eyes that every artist recognizes, a spark of inspiration and the joy to share it. I met some lovely creative souls through the years, but Linda was the one great discovery. No one had a vision quite like hers. Despite being in her sixties, almost twice my age, we always had a certain sense of youth in common.
On a sunny spring day, I stopped by to see her for the first time since closing my shop. Six years might seem a long stretch, and it is — but I'm an exceptionally introverted person. To me, an afternoon with someone after half a decade apart is as genuine as seeing them monthly. It was a good time indoors for a shadow-seeker like me, escaping blinding April weather with not a cloud in the sky.
I'd been by her house a couple times ages earlier, through the sleepy subdivision streets of Greenwood out behind the McDonald's, with names like Aurora, Neptune, Yukon, and Orion. It's the sort of neighbourhood where practically no one goes unless they live there. Despite the highly-settled area, Linda's house is surrounded by trees on all sides, so shrouded that you almost can't see it in summer. She was at the door when I arrived, and welcomed me up to the living room.
The first thing we talked about was confidence. It seemed natural to how our lives had gone in recent years, shaped around the stories we both try to tell in art, and the bravery it takes to find a listener. Linda's first experience with social anxiety was in school, like most of us: "A speech... I had problems with that because I would stutter. I'd get this twitchy nerve... and my eye would start doing this thing while I'm up there doing a speech." She laughed, and mimed an awkward expression with one side of her face. "Just nerves, y'know."
"To talk about something that you don't know about, and be confident is huge — it's huge! Now, there are people who can do that all the time. I've noticed with salesmen that they'll ask a customer three, four, maybe five questions, and then 'Bam' — they're right in there to sell. I can't do that, and I've watched people do these things, and I just don't have that confidence."
This made me wonder what finally got Linda over the hump into selling her artwork to the public, though I already suspected the answer. "Financial strain," she stated succinctly. We both nodded with a brand of mutual understanding that most working artists share. "That, and you know, things were starting to stack up here. Too many paintings, and I had to find a way to get rid of some them. Why? Because I've run out of room, because I need to buy medication, because I like to have a meal! That's why."
We started drifting back to her early career in the 1980s. "I liked working for the newspaper office — 'cause it was creative, you know. I did that for four years, worked for Mailman Publishing in Bridgetown." Linda had her son then, when she was thirty: "They called it a 'geriatric pregnancy'." She laughed. "The second my son was born, I was in love. Even though I thought I'd be a bad parent, I was still in love with this child the second I saw him.” At eight months old, he developed pneumonia and was sent to Soldier's Memorial in Middleton. "I was a single parent, and they're like: 'You have to be here to look after your baby.' Because the nurses just couldn't be with him all the time — and he was in a bubble with the oxygen and all that. Well, I lost my job because of it. Of course, the newspaper does not stop, it goes on."
After that, Linda stayed home with her son, and raised him until he went to school. He had other health issues, as well as a mental disability, which required constant care. With no income, she moved into a row of government housing known locally as "Smurf Village". Down a sleepy cul-de-sac in Lawrencetown are eight similar structures, duplexes comprising a community out of sight. They were nicknamed early on by some unknown person, for their companion construction and pastel shades of siding — and that cartoon was airing Saturday mornings at the time. The real name is Sunvalley Street, but you'll only hear it said if you're asking for an exact address.
"I loved living there, I did." Linda explained, despite the humble setting. "The neighbours were okay... it's just, I had this new place. It hadn't been built very long." She gestured around at her current house, also a government construction: "This was built about the same time. My son's almost thirty-four now. I stayed home with him until he was five... I had to support him, and he needed a lot."
"I looked around for almost two years for a job — just anything!" Linda had to be home when her son was, which only left her the morning and a bit of the afternoon.
She eventually landed a position at the local Zellers, a now-defunct department store in Greenwood which was eventually replaced by Walmart. "I learned to do 'planogram', which is shelf-mapping. All those companies pay to have eye-level, that's prime position. You know, it's kind of like a puzzle. Sometimes the map doesn't fit the shelf, and there's a lot of problem solving — I was only getting minimum wage." After a few years, she switched to Canadian Tire in the same job. "I was unloading a whole pallet of kitty litter onto shelves, and storage, and everything. I was tired, and I thought: 'There's something not right.'" Getting out of the car at home, her legs gave way and she fell to the ground.
"So I ended up in the hospital, and I saw a specialist in Halifax. She said to me: 'Too many women nowadays are trying so hard to be independent, and they're doing jobs that men are supposed to be doing, and won't.'" Linda didn't necessarily agree with that assessment. "I think she was just trying to make me feel better because I couldn't move my legs." They put her through the MRI, and discovered that the discs in her spine had slipped in four places. Only in her forties, this marked a permanent end to Linda's working life. "I ended up in physio, learning to walk again." Because the collapse happened in her yard and not on the job, she wasn't deemed eligible for worker's compensation.
Laying on the couch, immobile for hours at a time, that's when art started slipping back into Linda's life. It was like time traveling back to her earliest experiences with creativity. "When I was a little girl, and people asked me what I was gonna do when I grew up — I told them I was gonna be an artist. When I was four or five, I had dreams of painting walls with Egyptian symbols and kings, and the turquoise colour that they used. I had dreams and dreams of those, and I spent hours trying to draw them with friggin' crayons, you know."
"There was this thing in the comic books when I was a kid, it was like: 'Draw a picture of this turtle, and send it into this art institute.' — and then, they would tell you if you had the ability or not. I was probably eight, nine, and I sent it in. They called my parents from Minneapolis or someplace, and they wanted to send a representative out. This guy came, and Mom was not interested. I never had any art training at all."
"I talk with a lot of people online, and they're always asking for a picture of me. They want to put a face to who they're talking to. Well, I don't want to put that old woman up there." Linda feels much more connected to imagined images, the stuff in flights of fancy. "I spent a lot time trying to draw realistically, but it was too restricting. I found no freedom in portrait work. When I started with paper, it was out of necessity to move my arms, and get me moving."
Her husband at the time was encouraging — at first. "Until it started to sell, and his didn't. He didn't like that. He considered himself an educated realistic artist, and he is. Where I'm self-taught, and full of freedom, and do what I friggin' want. To me, our styles were so completely different that there's no competition. Either way, the money's coming into our house if one sells."
I fondly recall finding homes for dozens of Linda's artworks during those years at my art gallery, the first place she'd ever displayed her work. The brand new experience had been a thrilling one for her at the time: "I was excited, but I couldn't show it. I had to keep it to myself." These were early signs of a breakdown in the relationship. One day, her husband packed nothing but a carry-on bag, and hopped a flight back to his homeland of Wales. "It was like mourning a death," she said, "still is." All his stuff remained, and five years later, it's still up to her to deal with it.
Animals often feature significantly in Linda White Holloway's artwork, especially cats, so I was surprised to find that she had no pets of her own. She told me a little anecdote about a tomcat she sees most often.
"Cats in this subdivision aren't supposed to be loose, but he goes out in the morning when his owners get up and go to work. My son feeds him, gives him a little snack. The cat will come in and lay on the couch for probably half an hour, and then he's gone for the rest of the time. I've learned that he goes up this street, and visits everyone during the day. He has a day slot for each house — but he comes here first thing. I don't have to clean up after him, he's the perfect pet!"
In fitting with speaking to a painter, the last word of the day belongs to a visual perspective. My internal dialogue is all words, I explain to Linda. "Mine's all pictures," she returns, "so I have to do a double-think to describe what's in my brain. When I think about people, I see their face, I don't hear their voice. When I think about events, I'm watching it happen — like a movie in my brain." This is key to her artistic expression. "People look at my artwork, and they know me."
We talked for four hours about all things passed since we last spoke, until the afternoon sun was sinking, and dinner was calling me. The day was a fine reminder of the joys in keeping less to yourself. That's a need running deeper in me than most, I'd wager. Artists are lost without audiences, and talkative people need good listeners, but they also require folks who know how to talk back. I hope you have that in your life. I'll never get over how much it's meant to have in mine.
