With the hills starting to turn green, many crops in the fields, leaves on the trees, flowers in the beds and a bright blue sky overhead, it can’t be anything but the start of another beautiful and educational tourist season.
In fact, Saskatchewan Tourism Week is just around the corner, running from May 26 to 30, an annual kick-off to what tourist operators hope will be a banner year as far as visitor numbers and economic values are concerned.
It is a given that tourist folks also hope the excitement of this opening of the official tourist season will continue to build and grow through June to the Labour Day weekend, and then beyond into the “shoulder season,” the time of year when most attractions are closed but senior travellers like to hit the road looking for scenic spots and event-related activities.
Years and years ago we didn’t think of ourselves as tourists when we took a summer vacation. We were simply “on holidays,” pitching a tent in an unserviced campground or visiting the relatives until the welcome became worn and ran out.
Sometimes the summer vacation was merely a trip to a bigger city where we might visit a museum or eat in a restaurant rather than packing our lunch to eat at a roadside turnout, where there was a communal bathroom in a shack.
Gradually, it dawned on someone with some savvy and marketing skills that vacationers should be acknowledged as tourists, worthy of the open arms of welcome and friendship in the places they stopped.
If I knew then what I know now, friends and family might well be in an art gallery somewhere, admiring the works of art created by Yours Truly through paint-by-number kits.
I’m sure anyone of my age had such an artistic kit with which masterpieces were to be created. There might be one in a box in the far, dusty corner of a storage area. Certainly, the paints would be dried dust by now, but perhaps there might be value in a half-finished painting of puppies or kittens.
This recent interest in a hobby of my youth came about when I read a story about the death of one of the artists responsible for taking paint-by-number from an idea to a successful retail and artistic endeavour.
Dan Robbins probably wasn’t a household name, but in 1950, he took his idea to his employer, the Palmer Paint Company in Detroit and with some show-and-tell experiments with his employer and the public, paint-by-number kits were launched.
While artists of some note turned their noses up at the idea that masterpieces could be produced by ordinary folks who had to rely on numbered designs, Robbins quickly pointed out that Leonardo da Vinci made such numbered designs for his helpers. Therefore, if Leo used them, don’t put those noses too high in the air.
Over close to 75 years, sales of paint-by-number and paint-by-crayon kits thrived, and such has been the success that finished works are displayed in galleries and museums. As well, a Paint-By-Number online museum was established that showcased more than 6,000 completed artworks.
One of the selling features was health-related, as they were being used as a form of therapy to increase self-confidence and improve motor skills and hand and arm movements. And they are proven to increase one’s concentration.
I loved crayon colouring as a youth and still enjoy it today. Therefore, I recall begging the parents to buy me a beginner paint-by-number box. They provided the usual excuse: “No, they’re too expensive.” But it might have been Christmas or my birthday when they caved in and provided me with what I suspect they hoped would be a hobby that would be more successful than knitting or sewing.
The topic of the design escapes me, but I was determined to finish my first painting and then move on to one with more challenges. Hurry up was my downfall, even though I was warned I couldn’t paint numbers beside each other until the paint was dried. But that took too long, and so I ventured forward and created quite an abstract design of my own with several colours of wet paint globbing onto each other.
From my recollection, my mother finished that first painting, doing a colour a day while I was away at school, where I confounded the teacher with my stick people and lack of any eye for colour.
The memory is vague here, but I do believe I received subsequent kits and finished some of them to look somewhat like the picture on the box. I do not recall any family member or friend offering to hang them in the living room, kitchen or outhouse. But then that was years before the significance of the finished product was known.
If I were painting today, perhaps I would be scouted for an online show — or not.
I highly suspect my painting would be overlooked by a masterpiece contributed by a five-year-old. I wonder if my five-year-old great niece is a painter? Hmmmm.
Joyce Walter can be reached at [email protected]
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the position of this publication.
