Pausing...

Pausing, acrylic on board 16 X 18

The painting above is one I sold recently at the Frameworks show. The simplicity of the scene really appealed to me as I worked on it. It is was not hard to resist adding "more". Sometimes less is more. When it was done I thought of Robert Frost's poem "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening". One might glance and stop to catch the simple beauty of sun on grass, pause and enjoy a moment lovely and light. Obviously it is not a snowy evening so here is how the poem might work (apologies to RF):

Stopping By Fields On A Hazy Evening

Whose fields these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his grass gleam and glow. etc

Here's another wonderful poem that starts in a field. By Mark Strand, this poem is about not stopping, at least that is the superficial message. Strand's "verse deals primarily with the relationship between the individual self and the rest of the world in language that is spare and through images that are often surreal and dream-like." I think the style of the poem fits the style of my painting, but the message is quite different.

Keeping Things Whole

In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.

When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body's been.

We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.

Art and Wine, a perfect match

Last fall my husband picked a pail full of wild grapes from the neighbour's fence. He has produced 4 bottles of his "Mowat Ave Red Fox Wine" as he calls it. Not to be outdone by the vineyards who commission artists to create labels, I was asked to print out 4 of my pastoral scenes for his exclusive and very limited varietal. Some vineyards pay the artists outright; others supply them with wine. I think I'll go for the latter.
Here in Ontario the Hillebrand Winery in Grimsby has an annual contest for artists:

"Our long standing support of the arts comes to life in Artist Series. Each bottle features the original work of an Ontario artist, a beautiful piece that captures the spirit of our province and shows the incredible talent found here. Inside the bottle is the work of our talented winemaker, Darryl Brooker. "
You can see some of the past winners here.

Next time you visit the LCBO remember to support the wineries that support the arts!

A Great Day!

Tundra #1 - 14" X 30"
click to enlarge, lots of nice texture!

Both Sally and I were thrilled with the turnout for the opening of our show on Sunday. The Frameworks staff (incuding Sally) had done a super job to make the space inviting and many folks spent the afternoon chatting and munching, munching and chatting. And enjoying the art of course; we both sold pieces which was very gratifying.
My impressionistic landscape above (which has not sold yet) was one of my favourites in the show. It did get lots of attention but no takers. If it is still unsold next month I may keep it. I did 2 others like it, all reminiscences of my travels in Labrador. Labrador is a magical beautiful place, one of the last true wilderness sites in the world, right here in Canada.

"Double Feature" Opening on Sunday!

Evening, acrylic on canvas 24 X 36

Dave, at Frameworks, has called our show "Double Feature" as 2 artists are showing new work. As well as my quirky landscapes, Sally Chupick has a large number of her sumptuous landscapes, cityscapes and florals in the show. I have 15 unusual pieces on display, all new, completed within the last few months. Despite the variety of interpretation in my work I am consistently examining landscape, some pieces quite representational and others more abstract, patterned or atmospheric. I like to discover new approaches so I'm not sure I will ever leave my period of "artistic gymnastics" as VanGogh called his stylistic explorations. The one above was finished yesterday with the blow dryer hastening the varnish so it could be delivered to the gallery. Our show opens on Sunday from 1-4pm. Sally and I have our tiaras polished and shoes shined so we hope to see you there. The art will be on display until April 30. Frameworks is at the corner of Princess and Montreal, in downtown Kingston.

Stop Blaming Mother!

The long ride home had me thinking about the workshop, the pros and cons. It certainly was a new experience for me to view art as a therapy, a process rather than a product. Blocks to creativity were discussed : the usual nuggets of conformist schooling, repressive parenting and the evils of coloring books. I have problem with this as most of the artists we admire today came from very strict societies and frequently had major demons nibbling at their psyches. Their education focused soley on knowledge rather than imagination. Did they go to BE workshops to open up? Maybe they meditated for at least an hour a day or were sexually abstinent - these were also discussed. But I have read "Sex Lives of the Artists" know the latter is is rather dubious. (See also The Big Bang Theroy of Art, fascinating reading about creative types, maybe being promiscuous and schizophrenic is the answer.) Or was it the copius amounts of absinthe that led early artists to be more expressive? Maybe their sad, demanding or neurotic mothers were the muses that led to creativity? (Van Gogh's mother Anneke above.)
I loved my coloring books and had a huge collection of crayons. I coloured within the lines, sometimes I added my own lines. I learned that with careful amounts of pressure and various forms of hatching you can shade and blend even with wax crayons. Push enough crayon onto the page and you can put a paint wash over top. Take the page out, turn it over and make a rubbing. Oil it and make it transparent. I could go on and on. Colouring books are just another tool to use creatively. Thank you Mom!
Some more intersting reading about creativity in kids, click here.

Get in Touch with Your Inner Pain

Sunday's session at Jonas' and Kat's BE workshop started with a warning that we would have to work harder, dig deeper. We needed to really let our deepest fears, angers, hates, sorrows etc emerge in our paintings. The kind of joy we admire in Jonas' work is only possible by first unloading all the baggage that is holding us back. Now I had been having a good time and didn't really want to drag up old issues let alone waste good paint on them. I should have struck firm but also thought I should conform to these expectations. So I painted about my experiences with health crisis, typical dysfunctional family problems and gloomy winter depression. What emerged was angerlite. Jonas wanted to see more angst, more blood and guts. It made me angry, I didn't want to be angry. Was he goading me to attack the paper? If so, it worked. Here is something I blasted off in a few minutes when it was clear my work was too mild. But even this one turned out to be just plain silly.

Painting Marathon

Today we started painting at 9 a.m. and worked to 5 with a short break for lunch. I did 4 paintings, not completely finished but close. We were instructed to work silently and just enjoy the process without trying to create a polished product. Jonas and Kat circulated asking about our thoughts and offering some of their own which frequently came in the form of more questions. The one above (tempera 20 X 24) started as a stylized self portrait. I rotated it and the temple emerged.





Another full day of painting tomorrow in Jonas'
huge studio space. A pic of his painting table, a
work of art in itself, is here. He uses the edge of the table to wipe his brushes. Years of accumulated acrylic paint has totally covered the table edge with a rainbow coloured coral reef.

Jonas Gerard & Asheville NC

Heading south, over the Smoky Mountains to Asheville

Hi y'all, greetings from Asheville, home of sun, no snow and the studio of Jonas Gerard. My workshop starts tomorrow, have a look here and you will see why I am stoked!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1I1lfe1ngtc

"Now What" is nearing completion

still untitled, acrylic on canvas 24 X 36

Today I worked on this piece, I posted an image of the underpainting earlier this week and waited for the inspiration muse to arrive. Putting work aside when I am at an impasse seems to be a good strategy but it means a lot of unfinished work sitting around the studio. I'm also waiting to decide if a piece is finished. Sometimes it looks great when I stop for the day and the next morning it may look like poop! Right now I'm thinking this one might be close to DONE. The layers are formal, somewhat meditative and playful too. Hints at a natural order that keeps us on an even keel. It has my landscape line thing going on so maybe you can see some consistency with other recent work.

Framing and Naming

This is one of two pieces I took in for framing yesterday. Choosing a frame from the hundreds available was a lot easier than choosing a title from the infinite number of possibilites. Obviously it is a landscape but a loose and somewhat abstracted version so I think the title should be loose too. I like the viewer to bring his own intrepretation to my work so I don't like to direct the response. A vague title or nondescript title is what I need...

Now What? WIP

Here's one I've been playing with, 24" X 36". It's somewhat like the Pound of Paint picture I posted last week. I've taken the landscape theme I've been working on and reduced it to bands of pattern and colour, enlarge it to have a better look. Today I stuck a variety of turquoise shapes on it but pulled them all off. Nothing seemed quite right, putting it away for a few days.

" A Consistent Body of Work"

"There Goes the Neighbourhood" mixed media bas relief 24" X 36" click to enlarge

I have nightmares about "a consistent body of work". Since setting out on the path to abstraction my work has been anything but consistent. I guess that means I haven't arrived yet. Even when doing respresentational work I was always exploring - new media, new subject matter, new approaches. I know that artists are expected to produce a consistent body of work, one that shows they are exploring a theme or approach in great depth. They develop a recognizable style. Either I have a limited attention span or my "bin there, done that" attitude means I have no style. Maybe my style is novelty! For now, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.
The piece above is a type of bas relief with lots of shallow sculptural detail. It was selected for the KAC Juried Arts Salon a few years back and sold! It is constructed of board, layers of foam, and gritty modelling paste followed by numerous glazes of oil paint. I've only done one other piece like it. Bin there, done that!

A Pound of Paint

I finished this one a few weeks ago. It is 12 X 24" and likely has a pound of paint on it. Manipulating the various gels, polymers and acrylic paint was a bit like icing a cake, if you could imagine at least 10 different kinds of icing on the same cake. Fortunately this one is for the eye, not the tummy. Not sure if this is a good painting, but it was a good learning experience. Have a click on the image to enlarge and see all the yummy texture!

Doris McCarthy

Doris McCarthy was the elfin faced mystery artist for January. She will be 98 in July and is still painting. Look at her fingers! I was fortunate to attend a small presentation she gave here in Kingston a few years ago. Doris has been a plein air painter, working outdoors well into her 80's along Canada's coasts and northlands, sitting out on the tundra or in the snow. She did a brief journey into abstract art but quit as "it didn't sell". I love her boldness and honesty. Here's Doris' website: http://www.dorismccarthy.com

Doris McCarthy -Boughton Reflections 1984

A Transitional Piece

Salt water grass, 12 X 24" oil on canvas

This painting was inspired by the salt water grasses I photographed while visiting Les Iles de Madeleine (Magadelen Islands). The colours really were this spectacular as was just about everything else we saw on these inspiring islands perched in the gulf of the St. Lawrence. This piece is still quite objective but I was starting to "loosen up" on my brush work. Sometime soon I'm going to try another version of this same subject but even looser and of course more abstract - as I am on the journey to abstraction...
Lately I feel like I am on the journey to distraction as nothing is going right in the studio! When I was doing narrative work I could tell when something was done, when it was good, when it was bad. Now with the looser approach it ALL looks bad! I wonder if abstract artists are more prone to neuroses than their more objective colleagues?

Who Is It?

" It's sheer physical labour being an artist, but it's the thing I love to do.
I have rejoiced in it every step of the way."

This month's mystery artist will either be very easy or impossible, depending on your interests! I was going to make it easier but there is a ringer in the crowd. Hopefully this photo and quote will provide a little more challenge for him....

True North

True North 10" X 20"

I think this one is done. It has had many incarnations over the past few weeks but has finally emerged as something with which I am satisfied. Punching up the values and adding more colour made a big difference. My inspiration is the Canadian north and although I haven't been as far north as this might suggest, it is much like the Labrador coastal area I visited a few years ago. Big bold landscapes, powerful skies, little vegetation. There I felt like I was on the surface of the earth, not nestled in trees and granite and limestone as I am here in southern Ontario.
I'll be a adding this one to the show I am having with Sally Chupick at Frameworks Gallery in Kingston. Our opening is Sunday, February 24, 1-4 pm; the show will continue for the month of March and April.

Jonas Gerard

In February I will be travelling to Asheville NC for a weekend workshop with Jonas Gerard. Jonas will not be teaching any techniques, rather this is called a BE Workshop. Get in touch with your inner artist, just BE, express yourself. Sounds a little 60's and a little scary. What if a really strange and messed up inner artist emerges? Maybe she should stay bottled up? I was going to travel to Asheville on my own but after talking to Jonas and telling my husband what the workshop is about he has decided he and the dog will accompany me. Jonas confidently and calmly told me that this workshop will change my life! G (husband) will ensure that my life doesn't change my life too much and that all 3 of us return to Canada the way we left.
I'm looking forward to an advance preview of Jonas, Friday night on ABC's 20-20.

Red Hills

Red Hills, acrylic on board, 18" X 34"

Sometimes a painting seems to have a life all it's own, you just have to be there holding the brush and let it happen. This was one of those paintings. But no brushes this time, I used a brayer and various rags and paper to blend. I had to work very quickly as the paint dried much too fast, rag in one hand water spritzer in another. I almost had it, but put too much information in the foreground, trying to define grasses of various colours. It was OK but not the atmospheric feel I was after. A few hours later I redid the lower part as distant hills and Wham! There it was, a gentle painting smiling back at me. I knew it was time to back off. Where did this painting come from? Can I go there again and get another?

Yes, Kandinsky!

Vassily Kandinsky, Composition X, 1939 130cm X 195cm

The mystery painter was Vassily Kandinsky. Congrats Dave! (aka Stlukesguild).
With the shift in my style to somewhat more abstract I have actually been reading art books, not just looking at the pictures. Kandinsky gradually abandoned recognizable forms and perspective in favour of powerful colour and dynamic compositions. He felt recognizable objects harmed his pictures and limited his freedom. Paintings should grow out of what he called "inner need" not any external model. The artist's voice and his soul is the source of inspired painting.
I'm not sure if my soul was at work on this piece below but I was certainly able to abandon perspective and objects. And I had a lot of fun doing it, that has to be good for the soul!

Composition 1, 30in X 30in