Patricia Trudeau is no stranger to the Bookstore on Perron Street. The bookseller carries her Agnes Carroll mystery books on its shelves, after all. This month, Trudeau’s works are making an appearance but in a different format than paperback.

Trudeau is capitalizing on the location’s recent foray as one of ArtWalk’s least expected but still popular venues. So popular in fact, that now that ArtWalk is done for 2012, the store is still carrying on the tradition but not under the same banner.

“I’m the first one up,” she said. “I guess I’m getting used to things like this.”

Every month, a new local artist will be featured in a solo show in the backroom gallery. First up, Patricia Trudeau. The 81-year-old painter is no slouch to creative work, nor is she a stranger to exploring the great wide world. Every time she heads off with her sketchbook and her camera, the tools of her trade, ready to see the wondrous sights of foreign lands and paint them when she returns.

“While I was travelling I took pictures and did sketches and made notes so I could capture some of the places I’ve been.”

Some of those places include points in the Mediterranean and the Caribbean, like Aruba, Colombia, and some spots in and around the south of France including the Pyrenees and Catalonia. She went into Italy as well, checking out Florence and Tuscany. That, she says, was a wonderful sketching trip through Europe about 12 years ago.

She also had a busy summer since she is still fresh out of her participation in a group show at the Centre d’arts visuels de l'Alberta in south Edmonton. Some of those images make their appearance here, thanks to Father Douglas, one of her compatriots in the Visual Arts Studio Association. When she had to come up with work for this show, he made a wise suggestion, knowing full well her travelogue.

“Douglas said, ‘Why don’t you do some of your travel pictures?’ I got those and I got out this other collection from other places and just put them into the show,” she stated, referring to her busy schedule of work and wanderlust. “Usually once a year I go on a cruise with some friends of mine. Maybe we’ll do one in December if everybody’s ready and we can find one that’s not too long.”

The works themselves are lovely and warm, making viewers long to be there as well but transporting them there briefly with glimpses of old countrysides and beautiful flowers.

As for the future, she’s still getting ready for the upcoming painters’ guild show at St. Albert Place in a few weeks. She promised a few larger works for that one, including some collages.

After that, she expects to hunker inside and do more painting in her home studio as winter slowly sets in.

“I don’t ski or skate or any of those things any more!” she laughed.

She also said that her publisher has her next book on the docket, waiting for its turn to be edited before it can come out.

“I don’t know whether it will be out by the end of the year or not.”

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