Artist Information
Artist
Laura Edna Mott (1889-1977)Role
PainterDate made
n.d.Time Period
20th CenturyNotes
ARTIST BIOGRAPHY
Likely born in Aylmer, Ontario, Laura Edna Mott was a little-known Canadian artist with a particular gift for water scenes and floral painting in watercolour, as well as pastel portraits and commercial art work. She studied at the Winnipeg School of Art (evening classes) that had been established in 1913 after the founding of the Winnipeg Art Gallery in 1912. The school later merged with and became the new School of Art at the University of Manitoba. She was a member of the Winnipeg Art Students Sketch Club/Winnipeg Sketch Club (1914-16, 1925-28), exhibiting in 1916, 1918, 1926 and 1927. Mott was also a member of the Manitoba Society of Artists for a number of years (1929, 1933, 1935-37 and 1939). She exhibited in her own Winnipeg studio on Assiniboine Drive as well, and with other artist friends in the city such as Marie Guest (1880-1966), and beyond, such as in the Annual Exhibition of Canadian Art in Ottawa in 1933.
Mott did commercial art work for Brigdens of Winnipeg Ltd. Designers & Engravers, a major commercial art producer in the West (i.e., Eaton's catalogues), as well as for at least one other Winnipeg company, Austin Marshall Co. In 1939, she left Winnipeg, and during a family farm visit to Aylmer that year gave a talk on "Spanish Art and Artists" based on a European trip some years before. Mott appears to have lived in Toronto in the 1920s and mid-1940s. She moved back to Aylmer as of 1970, and is buried in nearby Hamilton.
