Inside a Graphic Artist’s Bowen Island Haven

Bowen Island, B.C., 20 minutes from Vancouver by ferry, is home to just 4,000 people; it only got its first traffic light this past summer. And yet the island has an offbeat energy that seems to attract an outsized number of artists. The town was a perfect fit for Marian Bantjes, a graphic artist renowned for her intricate patterns. In 2001, after earning enough money running her Vancouver design firm, Digitopolis, she bought a four-bedroom, two bathroom Swiss chalet–style home on the island.

At the time, much of the real estate stock there was 1980s builds or awkwardly renovated cabins, and Bantjes’ new home was no exception. “It had a great feel but it was a real dog on the inside,” she says. The walls were lined with ugly cedar siding with bits of insulation peeking through, the floors were filthy plywood, and the electrical was a nightmare—many of the wires had been hammered through with nails used to hold up the siding. “The day I moved in, I came in with a sledgehammer and crowbar and started pulling things apart,” she says. 

Bit by bit, Bantjes transformed the hovel into a home that’s now just as quirky as her work. She spent a year living on the main floor of the house while opening up the rabbit warren of dark, small rooms upstairs: she turned the four bedrooms and one bathroom into a single large bedroom, bathroom and artist studio space where she created a body of work that eventually earned her the moniker “the Michelangelo of custom decorative lettering.” “I did almost all my work in that studio. I had long tables and a lot of surfaces to use for various projects,” she says. “From 2004 to 2013, I spent all my days there, often straight out of bed until sometime in the evening.”

Her work pace has slowed over the years, and she now spends less time in the studio and more in the garden, which she has slowly cultivated over two decades. “I’m really into conifers and weird gnarly plants like Juniperus chinensis ‘Torulosa’,” she says. Also in the garden are cockscomb and Wissel’s saguaro, which looks like a cactus. After attempting to grow peas and carrots that turned out to be inedible, she now sticks to ornamental plants.

The upstairs shower is a kaleidoscopic riot of colour in one of Bantjes’ artistic signature ornate patterns. There’s even a custom mural painted by the artist herself—in 2023, Bantjes added a porch to the side of the house and covered the white floor in looping, leafy flourishes in a deep shade of crimson. “I have considered going insane and decorating the surfaces of most of the house, but decided against it,” she says. “It would have been amazing, but the resale value would be shit. I’m not that important an artist.”

Bantjes loves the colourful environment she has created. “I hate neutrals. They’re like porridge. I don’t understand why anyone would want to live in a beige environment,” she says. To combat visual boredom, the kitchen and downstairs bathroom are filled with groovy multicoloured tiles. The woodstove in the living room rests in front of a corner of cobalt blue tile.

The downstairs bathroom features a quirky coin floor made with nickels instead of the classic pennies. After experiencing a shower leak, a plumber came and ripped out part of the shower and floor in order to seal the leak. Bantjes had already been saving spare change for a penny floor in the upstairs bathroom when she realized nickels were approximately the same size as the hexagonal tiles already there. “I like that it’s different,” she says. 

The house sits on nearly an acre’s worth of land, divided diagonally by a creek, looking out onto a forest. Often Bantjes will catch a glimpse of deer in the backyard. The ocean is a short walk away, where she can see whales in the distance while she walks her dog. “It is very quiet, and we don’t have street lights, so you can see the stars,” she says.

This past summer, after 23 years, Bantjes put the home on the market for around $1.1 million. “If I stay here, I’m afraid my life will feel monotonous,” she says. “I’ve been feeling restless. I want to start a new chapter.” She bought a new home near Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, where she plans to break some bad habits she’s accumulated over the years, like not cooking proper meals. 

She also hopes the new environment will jolt her back to work. She was restless for the past few years, constantly rearranging the studio, but it never worked. On the east coast, she’ll be closer to her brother as well as a friend who’s opening a letterpress shop, whom she plans to collaborate with. “I’m hoping it’ll be a time of new making, exploration and new friends,” she says.

More than anything, Bantjes hopes her home will go to someone who wants to live in a house rich with character as opposed to a boring white box. And they’d better not touch the upstairs shower. “I hope they love the shower because I would be gutted if they ripped it out,” she says.