! t r A e l b a Afford
PROFILE
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YOURS, MINE, OURS DB artist Eleanor McColl bridges the gap between thoughtful art and vibrant commerce with her new collection and offers something to everyone. Elizabeth Kerr reports PHOTOS BY Baljit
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Gidwani – www.evoqueportraits.com
etting a cappuccino has never been so complicated. At one of Discovery Bay’s hip new coffee houses, Eleanor McColl is fiddling around with her phone after scanning a tracing app, which doubles as a menu. She looks a bit perplexed; nothing appears to be happening. “I’m not sure I’ve ordered,” she says with a gentle chuckle. But her drink arrives a few minutes later, and, thankfully, it’s a good one. That makes it sound like Eleanor is a scatter-brained artsy type, and that’s just not true. She’s the first to admit that it’s taken her some time to find the balance of art, entrepreneurship, education and family that suits her, but she’s firm in her statements; a thinker who ponders the world around her (and then recreates it on canvas or in some other art form). Dressed in a billowy green skirt and sandals, Eleanor admittedly looks like an artist, but over the course of a soft-spoken afternoon she talks about how best to compartmentalise work, how it’s possible to listen to music while working, and her quest to get her three children, aged 12, 11 and eight, to nerd out on Star Trek. “We’ve done all the Marvel films. I love all those,” she comments. “I never watched that kind of thing as a kid. I was all about Green Gables.”
“I am enjoying all aspects. The meditative work of painting, the " challenge of the entrepreneurial side and the giving back element
of my teaching practice… - ELEANOR MCCOLL
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AROUND DB / AUGUST 2021
