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Judy Jordison passes

Popular White Rock artist and art advocate battled cancer for two and a half years
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File photo Judy Jordison (1942-2017) examines relics of her great grandfather, British artist Harold Moss in 2015.

Painter/muralist Judy Jordison – for many years a valued member of the White Rock arts community – has died.

Daughter Michelle Johnson said her mother passed away Friday afternoon in White Rock Hospice, at the age of 75, following a two-and-a-half-year battle with cancer.

Well-known for her bold, yet sensitive, approach to colour, form and texture in large scale still-life studies, florals and landscapes – a skill she extended into commissioned mural assignments – Jordison was frequently highlighted in gallery exhibits and was also active in promoting the arts in the community in ways both formal and informal.

A resident of White Rock for 38 years, she had taught art classes in the 1980s and 1990s at the former Station Arts Centre through the White Rock and District Community Arts Council (now Semiahmoo Arts).

With the late Kathy Macdonald, she was a co-organizer and leading light of the White Rock Studio Art Tour for some 20 years. She also helped establish the Tuesday Larger Than Life drawing group, and she had also been one of the ad-hoc group of ‘guerilla’ artists who added life to the uptown area for more than a decade by regularly painting an ever-evolving mural on the wooden fence that formerly surrounded the former gas station site next to the Coast Capital Playhouse.

“She didn’t tell many people about her illness,” Johnson said, adding that it had started as lung cancer, but had spread to other organs.

While she had curtailed many arts activities in the last several years, she never stopped painting and drawing, Johnson noted.

Her most recent local show, highlighted in the Peace Arch News on March 5, 2015, was an exhibit at South Surrey Recreation and Arts Centre’s Turnbull Gallery featuring her panoramic painting of England’s Lake District, a tribute to the favourite painting territory of her great-grandfather, artist Harold Moss.

Her last art work was collaborating with Toni Williams on a large mural painted at the B.C. Farm Museum in Fort Langley, Johnson added.

“She made it out to that opening, on June 17, although she wasn’t doing well.”

Jordison is survived by partner Gary Chase, her children, Johnson, Kathie Floesser and Scott Jordison and their families, including seven grandchildren and two great grandchildren.

A celebration of life is planned for Saturday, Sept. 9, 9 a.m. to noon, at Kwomais Point Park.