Donna Balma

Donna Balma, born 1934 in Victoria, British Columbia, is a self-taught painter and writer. Balma married John Reeve, a potter, and went to England with him in 1958 so that he could study ceramics under Bernard Leach and his wife, Janet in the Cornish fishing village of St. Ives. Along with the other British Columbian artists studying and working there (including Glenn Lewis and Michael Henry) they became known for the sort of artist collective and modern poetry movement that developed out of this study under Bernard Leach. Balma and Reeve had two children: Hanna, born while at St. Ives, and Soledad, born in Victoria upon their return to Canada.   

At this time in art history in Canada, pottery began to be looked at as art and not merely as functional craft. After the two-and-a-half-year apprenticeship at St. Ives Pottery, Reeve and Balma returned to Canada. However, they returned to England in 1962 where he established a pottery with Glenn Lewis and Warren Mackenzie called Longlands, which was closed a few years later due to financial difficulties. In 1966, Reeve and Balma again returned to England upon invitation from Janet Leach to oversee the Leach Pottery.

Reeve and Balma separated shortly after November 1974, when they left England for the last time and returned to the Sunshine Coast, BC, where both worked at Michael Henry’s Slug Pottery. Balma, a registered massage therapist and self-taught artist, continued live on the Sunshine Coast, producing bold, complex, illustrious and dreamlike paintings (often dubbed surreal in genre). She has also published works of fiction and art history.