Friends and artists remember Hilda Woolnough as P.E.I. gallery renamed for her

P.E.I. artist Hilda Woolnough is being remembered and celebrated 14 years after her death with the renaming of a prominent art gallery. 

The gallery at The Guild in downtown Charlottetown has been renamed the Hilda Woolnough Gallery. A retrospective exhibit of Woolnough's works at the gallery opened Nov. 18.

"I think it's about time," said Gail Rutherford, an artist on P.E.I. and a friend of Woolnough.

"We wouldn't have The Guild without Hilda, because she had the determination that she could make this work." 

Woolnough was instrumental in starting The Arts Guild in Charlottetown, now called The Guild, as a space for artists at a time when not much like it existed in the capital. 

Rutherford, the partner of the late artist Erica Rutherford, remembers going with Hilda to look at Charlottetown buildings that could be used as an arts space. The building that now houses The Guild used to be home to a Royal Bank branch. 

"Hilda had the foresight to see that even though [the building] had problems, it was available," said Rutherford. 

"She went and got this big deal where she got the place, you know, for absolutely nothing."

Woolnough's son, P.E.I. filmmaker John Hopkins, also remembers that pivotal moment of procuring the space. 

"Somehow in her charming way … she just had a way about her. I mean, it's a three-and-a half, four million dollar building, and she talked the bank out of it for a dollar," Hopkins told host Matt Rainnie on Mainstreet P.E.I. 

"I would love to have been a fly on the wall," he said. 

That transaction led to a thriving artistic community at The Guild that continues to this day. 

Woolnough was born in England and immigrated to Canada in the late 1950s, then settled on P.E.I. in 1969. 

In her artistic practice, she focused mainly on drawing and printmaking. She set up a printmaking studio in the basement of The Guild, behind where the gallery is today.