Hi and welcome to my website! I’m Marilyn.  

Aka The Photo Painter. A digital artist and librarian living a high-tech Victorian life in the Pacific Northwest, I restore old photos, bringing to life old photographs of people, cities, and landscapes with colour and animation.

While black and white photos can be stunning, our ancestors did not see themselves and their environment in monochrome. They were not one-dimensional people who wore clothing in a spectrum of greys. Seeing how our ancestors saw each other - in colour – brings the past into a new dimension.  

My interest in photo colourization began two years ago when I received several old trunks filled with my great-grandparents photos and papers. My librarian instinct kicked in, and I immediately started cataloguing and researching these documents that told the story of my ancestors in Canada. 

At the same time, I came across a collection of colourized photos online that were realistic and historically accurate. Having a background in nineteenth-century history and photography, I began teaching myself how to colourize with my family’s own photo collection.  

In March 2020, as the pandemic restricted me to the confines of my house, I became addicted to colouring black and white photos. The colourization process transported me to a different time, away from the day-to-day stresses of adapting to working from home and following the ever-changing public health orders. 

When local libraries and archives closed, I began a new project and began to colourize archival photographs from my hometown of Prince Rupert, British Columbia. As I worked through the photos and shared them online, I was amazed by the response and touched by the stories and memories that my viewers shared. 

This inspired me to continue with colourizing local history and I have been painting archival photos of early British Columbia.

I love taking my digital brush and applying layer upon layer of colour on the photograph and watching new details emerge. With colourization, previously unnoticed elements are uncovered. As the people and landscapes come to life, they become more relatable, and my hope is that others, like I do, gain a better understanding of what life might have really been like when the original photo was taken.