A jack of all trades who is spending his retirement in Turner Valley just can’t keep his hands still.
Retired stonemason Roger Chaplin is spending his quieter days in the Foothills drawing pastel images on repurposed wooden barn and fence boards.
“The nice thing about pastel is I can sit in the La-Z-Boy in front of the fire and watch TV and draw,” he said. “That’s basically where it all started. When I got home, tired, I would sit in front of the fire and draw.”
Although Chaplin spent years painting watercolours in his spare time, he settled on pastels in his retirement.
“With watercolour you have to have a designated area,” he said. “I found with pastel, because it’s a dry medium, I can sit and converse with the family and draw at the same time.”
It was about 20 years ago that Chaplin got the idea to draw his pastel images on wood.
He said it provides a rustic look to his art and it spoke to him, in a sense, when he began cutting and sanding old barn and fence boards.
“When you do that, different grains and knots pop out of the wood so that leads me to say, ‘Oh, that could be a waterfall,’” he said. “The wood tells you what’s in it. Once you get the technique down it’s fun. You can do a lot of things with it.”
Chaplin’s subjects vary from farm animals to landscapes.
Working with his hands is something Chaplin has been doing his whole life.
He began working as a stonemason in his native England, repairing sandstone buildings ravaged during the Second World War, including sculptures like gargoyles.
“I spent the last couple of years in my apprenticeship in England doing nothing but stone carvings,” he said. “There was so much work to do in England after the war. Right up until the early ’70s they were still repairing a lot of the damage.”
Chaplin said he just made enough money to buy a pack of smokes, a beer and rent. A car was a luxury that he and his fellow colleagues couldn’t afford.
When his apprenticeship ended, Chaplin’s boss received a request from Canada House for a stonemason to work in Calgary and Chaplin was chosen because he was the youngest of the crew and unmarried.
Chaplin recalls landing at the Calgary airport in 1960 wearing open-toed sandals and a raincoat.
“It was 28 below and blowing snow straight at you,” he recalls. “I just froze.”
Chaplin was put to work repairing sandstone buildings, including a library, houses of parliament and the Hudson’s Bay Company, where he and his crew placed three-inch marble in front of the downtown sandstone structure.
“Most of the government buildings in Canada were built in the 1800s to early 1900s and were all built with Welsh sandstone,” he said.
Sandstone deteriorates, said Chaplin, so he and his crew would often take half an inch off each 12-by-16-by-16 inch block, which weigh about 60 pounds each, and resurfaced them with brick mortar.
Looking for a new adventure 15 years later, Chaplin and his family moved to British Columbia where he went into the marble, granite, ceramic tile, limestone and slate business as a contractor in Vancouver.
His eldest son Craig was involved from a young age.
“I was a jack of all trades – you really had to be in Vancouver,” he said. “In the ’70s and ’80s it was pretty tough to find work. As a general contractor we specialized in ceramic tile, marble and granite, but you didn’t turn anything down back then because the work was few and far between.
“We did everything from framing drywall, texturing - everything.”
While in Vancouver, Chaplin was hired to create a sandstone sculpture from a drawing of a sailor in a boat struggling in the ocean.
The sculpture remains at Marine Park near the Vancouver Maritime Museum.
Although the $8,000 he received for the project was a lot of money in those days, he said it was more like a living wage considering it took six months to complete the project.
While Chaplin said he would love to continue working with stone, it’s too messy and he doesn’t have the required workspace.
As for his rustic pastel on wood, it seems to be a hit in the Foothills.
Some pieces are up for sale in All Through the House in Okotoks, Branch Market & Studio in Black Diamond, as well as in Calgary.
He also enters his art in local markets.
Last year Chaplin sold more than 100 pieces, which cost $40 to $120.
“It’s done very well,” he said. “A lot of people want homes with the cabin feel, not the drywall type thing. My artwork fits and it’s rustic.”
To see more of Chaplin’s artwork, visit his Facebook page by searching RC Artwork.
