First you start with love. An abiding desire for peace, both personally and in the world at large, has led Lorraine Eidlitz through a life of creativity. Influenced most by her paternal grandmother, a milliner by trade, and encouraged by her parents, Lorraine and her younger sister, Barbara, learned at an early age the delight and merit of making something from nothing. Mostly self-taught, Lorraine has worked professionally as an artist and potter since 1977. Ten year stints at the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition and the One of a Kind Craft Show in Toronto, a one woman show at the Del Bello gallery in Toronto, 17 years with the Muskoka Autumn Studio Tour and various awards for collage and printmaking throughout her 21 year association with Muskoka Arts and Crafts have established her reputation in Ontario and throughout the world with collections in Germany, England, Australia, Japan, etc.
In 1988 Lorraine moved from Toronto to Muskoka where she opened her studio and gallery in the village of Port Carling. Twelve years later she reopened her gallery on a large wooded property outside Bracebridge under the name Eidlitz Handworks. To offset the sabre rattling of war in Iraq, she created, with the help of like minded artists, PeaceWorks, an art show on the theme of peace, donating a percentage of sales to Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontiers) in 2003, and in 2004 The Stephen Lewis Foundation in support of Africans living with Aids. It was in 2004 that Lorraine met photographer Wally Edwards with whom she lives and collaborates.
Today the gallery shows Lorraine's original works in stoneware pottery, clay sculpture, watercolour, acrylic and oil painting, printmaking, collage, mixed media assemblage, and recent ventures into textile and ornament. Animals, colour, nature, themes of love and peace, something from nothing: these are the gifts of childhood that Lorraine Eidlitz recaptures and creates.
