Stardust and Story: The lives behind the lake paintings

"It's really remarkable," I told Elizabeth Lennie. "Your mother, your sisters, your grandfather—you come from a family of educators." Lennie laughed, flashing the broad grin that seemed to punctuate much of our afternoon together in her Toronto home and studio. "Our family strongly believes in education", she paused and reflected:

"We're all made of stardust. The only thing that distinguishes us as living beings are our stories."

That idea forms the foundation of Story and Stardust, her upcoming exhibition at the Art Gallery of Hamilton's Art Sales + Services Gallery.

For years, Lennie has been known for luminous paintings of swimmers, lakes, and childhood summers. Her work captures familiar Canadian rituals: afternoons at the cottage, skating on the pond, lounging by a pool, children diving into northern lakes, friendships forged outdoors and memories made in the water. But this exhibition reaches beyond nostalgia: while her paintings often begin with a memory, they ultimately become vessels for the stories attached to it—stories of family, loss, resilience, and the ways ordinary moments gather meaning over time.

The paintings in the series featured in Story and Stardust are inspired by photographs taken at her family's cottage on Rabbit Lake in Tamagami, Ontario. There, her three daughters spent much of their childhood. One piece, Curiosity, commemorates a proud camp achievement; while a repeat image featured in her Rabbit lake series captures a family friend shortly before a life-altering health diagnosis. What interests Lennie is the tension between the moment the photograph was taken and everything we now know happened afterward.

As she paints from these images, they become worn from use—marked by paint splatters, revisions, and repeated handling. In a way, they begin to mimic memory itself: layered, imperfect, and constantly evolving. The built patina does indeed form the looser evolution of Lennie's style. They are expressions of the stories that continue to shape our understanding of it.

Listening to Lennie talk about storytelling inevitably lead to us discussing our family histories. Education and creativity run throughout her family. Her grandfather taught pharmacology, her mother was a teacher, and learning was deeply valued. Lennie's own career has taken her through interior design, acting, narration, illustration, and painting. The commitment to learning as a life endeavor is a way of engaging in the pursuit of meaning in our human experience. That search became deeply personal early in her life.

At the tender age of thirteen, Lennie's father passed, leaving her mother to raise three daughters. At the time, she appeared remarkably composed. Years later, however, she discovered that grief does not always arrive when expected. Another family loss of a beloved pet left her grappling with inconsolable grief, and she sought therapy. The experience profoundly shaped her understanding of resilience.

This resilience appears quietly throughout her work. Beneath the swimmers, sunlight, and summer scenes is a recurring theme: we fall down in life, and somehow, we find the strength to get back up again. That is what makes Story and Stardust such a compelling title: by the end of our conversation, it seemed to describe more than an exhibition. It felt like a worldview. We may all be made from the same cosmic ingredients, Lennie suggests, but stories are what give our lives shape. They connect generations, help us endure loss, and transform ordinary moments into something lasting. If we are all made of stardust, perhaps stories are what make us human. Through this exhibition, Elizabeth Lennie invites us to reflect on the stories that have shaped us—and the ones still being written.