Anna Nike Leskowsky
Toronto, ON

Anna Nike is a retired elementary school teacher who lives in Toronto. She was a journalist in Poland. After immigrating to Canada in 1990, Anna Nike wrote under her maiden name, Mineyko. Her essays were published in The Toronto Star and college textbooks. After she retired from teaching in 2018, Anna Nike contributed her articles to The Toronto Star’s op-ed section, such as “Overloaded teachers need more support in the classroom” (Sept. 3, 2019) or “Spend time with centenaries to learn how to look forward to old age” (Jan. 30, 2020). On June 28, 2021, The Canadian Immigrant Magazine published her article about advice she gave herself as a new immigrant 30 years ago.

I stayed home and didn’t see my family and friends for weeks at the time due to the pandemic restrictions. Many hours of journaling and reflecting on my life were my primary activities during lockdown. One thing that consistently was coming back to me in my thoughts was the memory of art. I usually experience a desire to paint with connection to important milestones in my life, such as giving birth to my daughter, or immigrating to Canada from Poland. Sometimes, I have a strong need to express my feelings in art during difficult times; for example, when my daughter’s health was compromised. I remember how the presence of art helped me to overcome anxiety when I was worrying about my future and the well-being of my family.

My interest in painting started in my early thirties. I was sitting with my father in front of an old cottage that he rented soon after my daughter learned how to walk. My father was an amateur sculptor who carved imaginary animals in bark. He was creating his creatures and, at the same time, we were watching my daughter’s wobbly movements in front of the tall sunflowers that were leaning leisurely against the fence in our backyard. “I want to paint,” I said to my father. His red hair and beard looked in the sun as sensational as Van Gogh’s 1887 self-portrait. “Paint,” he said. “We can buy canvas tomorrow.”

I had seen art supplies used by my aunt many times. She painted landscapes and transferred painted images into tapestries. Her artistic expressions seemed to play a soothing role in her life. It was her way to escape from the memories of World War II and time in Auschwitz where she was taken to from her Warsaw home.

One day, she visited us at the cottage nonchalantly dressed in white oversized trousers and a loose navy blue shirt. Her yellow hat was protecting her delicate skin from the sun. Her outfit contradicted her very feminine figure. It seemed as if she decided to make a statement of freedom and independence by wearing man’s clothes and beaming with her female, outgoing, and soft personality. When she saw my paintings, she gave me one piece of advice, “Remember about contrast. A painting doesn’t mean much without it.”

That was the entire education I have received in visual art during the course of my life. This lack of expertise never stopped me from painting. I didn’t want to become a professional artist. Painting felt to me more or less like singing in the shower and experiencing pure joy inside me through images created by a paintbrush that happened to be held by my hand.

My mother, who was an architect in her professional life, loved to make sketches and paint landscapes. She used to show her father’s art to me; the pieces that survived the war. My mother shared her memories about my grandfather, also an architect, who once painted her portrait. They both were often hungry in a little cottage, located about 50 kilometers from Vilnius, where they lived during the war.

My grandfather, who passed away before I was born, had a kind and thoughtful personality. When he noticed his daughter’s sadness after the whole day of not having much to eat, he asked her to sit at an old loom and pose for him. During a few hours of painting, they both forgot about hunger. My mother’s portrait survived all those years after the war as a reminder of strength and love my family modeled for me.

I left Poland in 1990 to start my life in Canada. Every time I had a difficult moment adjusting to a new country, I painted a picture. Flowers, landscapes, portraits of children were the most calming images during my first years in Toronto where I settled after my arrival.   

I painted throughout the period of time after my aunt was diagnosed with cancer. After she passed away, I couldn’t attend her funeral held in Warsaw. Instead, I remembered her words about contrast and I painted flowers in her memory with dark shadows spread on the white canvas.

I enjoyed painting meadows after my father said to me during our phone conversation, calling from Poland to Toronto, “Don’t throw out your paintings when I am gone. They bring me so much joy.” I promised him to keep them forever.  

My first months in Canada seemed hopeful, but one year after we settled in our new country, my daughter got very sick. I took her to a hospital where we both spent five days together. I was watching my young child, the most beloved person in my life, shivering from fever, fighting a serious infection.

When my daughter got better, I should have celebrated her recovery. Instead, I couldn’t free myself from feeling guilty for not noticing the symptoms of her illness earlier. If I was only more attentive, I believed that I might have spared my daughter’s suffering in the hospital.

Eventually, she recovered from her illness and went back to school. Her blond long hair looked so bright when I picked her up, came home, fed her, and asked if she would sit still, so I could paint her portrait. She sat long enough to allow me to make a sketch of her face on canvas.

My daughter’s eyes were light blue and her hair was angelically blonde when I finished the painting. She looked at me from her portrait, begging me to exhale. “I am here,” I imagined her words. “I am alive and healthy.” After a long time of holding my breath and feeling paralyzed that something bad could still happen to my daughter, I was able to let go.

Life went on after my daughter’s recovery. Painting helped me to say good-bye to my mother who left her watercolour paintings on the walls of her bedroom among my landscapes and my grandfather’s paintings. Our apartment in Poland, still fully furnished, was left empty of people, but it kept some life of its own, as if the family artwork created a story that was not quite finished yet. 

One day, I decided to attend a visual art workshop. I wanted to experience painting with others, and, if it was possible, get some feedback from a professional artist. I entered the overcrowded room and could hardly find space to spread my canvas. Then, the question was what to paint.

An art-instructor knew some of his students and he tended to them with kindness. They were his frequent clients. I was new and too shy to ask questions. I noticed that the other students were looking at photographs of paintings. The idea was not to paint anything original, but to choose a photograph of a painting from an art magazine and copy it, or perhaps interpret it in our own way within our own abilities.

I was turning pages of the magazines and nothing was catching my attention, until I found a small photograph, already cut out from one of the magazines and left on the floor. I had never seen this painting before. It was labeled: “Vincent van Gogh, On the Outskirts of Paris.” I picked it up and somehow I knew that that was my only choice, without really understanding why.

I was fully engaged in painting during the workshop. I couldn’t notice the crowded room anymore or see the artist who was carefully adding some details to his regular students’ paintings. I was contemplating asking him for some comments, but, again, I didn’t have the courage to initiate a conversation. When I was leaving, he stopped me at the door, looked at my artwork, and said, “You did a good job.” I was happy to hear his opinion. It helped me to justify all the years of painting that often felt like a hobby without a reason.

I proudly placed the painting on top of my wall unit in my home office and glanced at it. At that very moment, I noticed that the man walking between the trees in the painting resembled my father. Was he showing me how hopeful my life journey was? Well, I didn’t know. The thing I knew was that the need to paint grew inside me into an extraordinary ability that allowed me to love and accept my rather ordinary life.

Today, with the hope that the pandemic is under control, I can look into the future with less anxiety. My now grownup daughter is healthy. She has her own busy life and often encourages me to write and paint. We both know that if anything went wrong in our lives, the gift of art would be there for us to lean on.