Letting go of one's paintings...

Sometimes paintings stay with you for awhile and some leave rather quickly.  For the past few years I have had a "Seasonal Sale" and this year I was happy that two paintings found new homes.

The first one the purchaser had looked at before and wasn't quite ready but this year he said "Yes, I will take it!" I was glad because I know he loves the outdoors and spends time teaching an outdoor Biology class each summer.

Beside Candle Lake - Watercolour

 The second painting went to a friend who lives near the river it is a view of.  It is a dark painting with light along the horizon, not unusual during the summer evenings. We get the most beautiful views at sunrise and sunset!

River Sunset - Oil

Recently - well before the snow, which came way too early this year, I wandered along the river behind the university buildings.  I walked a path after crossing the railway bridge along the river past a ravine and to class each day for 6 years.  A beautiful walk, and I was reminded of its beauty by looking closely at the shrubs and grasses as they wound their way down to the river.  I also went further along the river and sat on a huge rock at the river's edge.  It was quiet and beautiful.

This is my first of, I hope, a number of scenes close to the river. A 10 x 10" acrylic.

 Three different views - three different mediums - three of my favourite paintings.

nature's offering....

Nature never stops giving us beautiful scenes to look at.  Places of quiet beauty where silence is the natural response.

Last fall we spend a few days near Waskesui and wandered a few paths including Boundary Bog.  Love this trail.  Although the boardwalk soon became treacherous due to ice we were able to experience the quiet beauty.  I have tried to capture some of the roughness of the branches, twigs and tree limbs amongst the moss where there are various tiny plants which sometimes give a rusty glow.  Love the moss.  This painting is done in oil.

We also spent a short time at Candle Lake and one warm evening the sky was particularly beautiful.
A larger painting done in acrylic.

River Views:  I never get tired of looking at the river!! Here are a few paintings  - the scenes are from virtually the same spot but looking in different directions.  One from the top of the hills and one looking down into the river valley where there are lots of ravines with various trees.

Small cloud studies....

Clouds have always fascinated me and inevitably I look up to see them when I go outside.  Morning and evening - they give me the weather report!

I realize that the sky is never the same and clouds do not have a "pattern" so, as far as I can see, trying to paint them provides me with a huge challenge as well as great liberty.  I finally rolled out my oil paints and did a few small studies of clouds, trying to capture a small part of their variation.

Fallen Leaves...

While I don't want to think about fall, I do like to rustle through fallen leaves and I know that as the seasons go, fall will surely come.

This watercolour was begun last spring and I have worked on it off and on for the last few months - not as consistently as I should have.  However, I am calling it finished!

Slow and steady...

The new studio is up and running. I have been painting this week and enjoy having the birds keep me company outside the open window.  I'm still getting used to the space and have some items to put on the walls in the far end area - to break up the whiteness of the space, and to cheer me up when I give my eyes a rest.  

I continue to work with watercolour in my inside the house studio - yes,  I now have two spaces which is great!  It means I can work in different mediums without having to put one away before getting the other out.  It is also much less crowded inside.

Below is the "Leaves and Stones" painting in progression so far. See if you can see the differences:-)

slow going...

Some times things move along slowly.  But this can be good and is sometimes necessary. Slow and steady is generally how I work best.

Family commitments this past month have included wonderful times together and included adding one more beautiful daughter-in-law to make 4!!  Parents and grandchildren from afar joined us for a week which certainly livened up our house.  It's so good to have a full house.

We finally finished the floor in the garage studio and I made a window curtain.  I have started moving my acrylics and oils out there.  I will keep the watercolours in the house as I have a great window location to work on them.  I have two larger river views to do in acrylics and then it's back to oils - it has been over a year and I am itching to use them.

The studio is filling up but I have the canvas on my easel and paints set to go...  I hope to work on a painting this next week.

Meanwhile there is the garden!  It seems we have so many garden spaces in our yard and I still haven't worked through them all.  But some of them are shaping up.  This little side garden has a bit more light now since removing a shed alongside it.  I've added a few more perennials but still need to weed an overabundance of clematis seedlings.

I usually spend a few hours working in the garden in the morning before it gets too hot... then it's inside to paint or sew - oh yes, that is another thing - I absolutely must get my material under control so have been working on a few smaller items. 

 
Since taking this photo I have given it a good soaking and added a few perennials.  It's surprising how plants pop up after a good drink of water.  The hostas are finally up - I love to watch their leaves unfurl, and each year they get larger.

The new watercolour of leaves and rocks below is slow going.  My last painting of leaves sold at the April show. It  was one of my favourites [I don't have many favourites which I want to hold on to for awhile, but that was one and it took a few years to finally let it go to the gallery.]

This is slow going and will take quite a bit of time to finish yet.

So lots on the go... but moving slowly with many twists and turns.  :-)

Panoramic views...

There are a number of views I never seems to tire of - one is a river!

The South Saskatchewan River runs through our city and I love being near the river - gazing up and down it or looking at many close up scenes.  Most of the panoramic river paintings I have done have been from a location north of Saskatoon near Petrofka Bridge where my sister and her family lived in a beautiful A - framed house with huge windows and deck overlooking the river valley.

I wondered why they would live in a place which required an hour drive to work and home again each day - but while looking after the house one summer I experienced a huge sense of relief and well-being as we crested the hill and drove into the yard. That helped me to understand. The vastness of the sky, the river spread out in both directions and finally disappearing around a bend, the prairie grasses swaying in the breeze, the shrubs and trees which fill in the dips between the hills - all add up to a wonderful sense of being at home in space and time.

Here are my latest and largest paintings of the North Saskatchewan River valley.
The first two are the scene from the house near Petrofka Bridge and the third is of the same river just west of Langham.
All are 20 x 60" done in acrylic on canvas.

The privilege and the angst of thrusting my art upon others.

"I felt drawn to writing because for me it had opened chinks of light that became a window to another world... I became a writer because of my own encounter with the power of words, and I gained hope that spoiled words, their original meaning wrung out, could be reclaimed."

These statements by Philip Yancey, in the introductory chapter of his book Soul Survivor, introduce us to thirteen authors whose direct or indirect "words" spoke grace into his life and made a significant difference.  This book inspires me and reminds me that there have been and are authors whose words inspire me and have changed or confirmed my perspective. Yancey himself is one of them.

While I would not claim to be broadly read, I do read often.  I know we all have our preferences, but I would say that a few writers who have influenced me would include: Kathleen Norris, Barbara Brown Taylor, Henri Nouwen, Esther deWaal, John O'Donohue, Frederick Buechner, Sue Bender, and Madeleine L'Engle.

I always make a point of reading a writer's foreword/introduction looking for their 'purpose statement' because I like to know 'why' they are writing.  As I go through the book their thoughts unfold and build to minor points and finally the major reason for writing.

With art, as I go through a book, even if I am just glancing through it, I also first read the forward or purpose statement.  I want to know why an artist paints, the what and the way they do it.  Sometimes I can really resonate with what they say and it helps me clarify my own thoughts about why I paint.  One of my favourite acrylic artist "mentors" John Hammond writes, "My aim in painting is to communicate the feeling of a moment, and the things that define the moment for me are those temporary, transient qualities, the greatest of which is light."

An artist - be they a visual artist, a poet, an author, or a songwriter - all do it for a reason.  I think we often grow into the reason if it is not clear from the beginning.  It takes time to learn, to experiment, to come to terms with our own abilities, awareness - both inner and outer - and our doubts.

The past month, with a group show and a solo exhibition, has been one of "thrusting myself upon others as an artist" and this is hard.  I was reading Soul Survivor at the time and Yancey,  once again, puts in words what I was feeling.

"Every writer (artist) must overcome a kind of shyness, putting out of mind the fear that we are being arrogant by thrusting ourselves upon you the reader (viewer), and egotistical by assuming our words (paintings) are worth your time.  Why should you care about what I have to say?  What right have I to impose myself on you?  In another context, Simone Weil presents a kind of answer; "I cannot conceive the necessity for God to love me, when I feel so clearly that even with human beings affection for me can only be a mistake.  But I can easily imagine that he loves that perspective of creation which can only be seen from the point where I am."  That is all any writer can offer, especially a writer of faith: a unique perspective of creation, a point of view visible only from the point where I am." 

To paraphrase his next paragraph: Everything I paint is coloured by my life up to this point, my "unique set of eyes". I can only paint with passion about my own experiences, no one else's.  I find that viewers respond not to the specifics of my experience, but rather to what they summon up.  In the viewer, my paintings work a different effect than they worked in me as I composed them... Somehow my rendering, my tentative steps towards expressing my interpretation strikes a sympathetic chord: it provokes something.

In the end then, that is all I can do... take what I observe of God's creation, assimilate it and then set it onto the paper or canvas as my interpretation, my point of view. It then becomes an offering to the viewer.  Because much of what we write or paint is so personal it is difficult to grasp when others are touched by it.... yet it happens and it is humbling.

Numerous people have asked me recently if it is difficult to let my paintings go.  I was glad for a few last looks at some of my paintings which have sold and I will go to the gallery once again tomorrow to look one last time at the ones that have sold before they go to their new homes.  In a strange way, I feel there comes a moment in time when I know it is time to let a painting go. When someone else comes to appreciate and desire the perspective of creation that I have had the privilege to paint it is with a sense of release and of approval that I gladly relinquish my hold.... after all, the original scene belongs to all.  I have simply had the opportunity to capture it on paper or canvas and to do so in my own unique manner.

"The View from Here" - Solo Exhibition - continuing until April 22, 2017

"The View from Here" - Solo Exhibition - continuing until April 22, 2017

Five more days (April 18 - 22) if you would like to check out my paintings at Collector's Choice Art Gallery. I am pleased to know that 6 will be leaving the gallery at the end of the week for new walls.  It is always encouraging to know that people like a painting enough to put it on their wall!

“The View From Here”  - Solo Exhibition April 5 - 22, 2017

You may take the long view or the close up view, but when you gaze at nature’s beauty, fury, or stillness you are gradually brought into its intrigue. If you gaze long enough it will offer you its gifts.

"The View from Here" - Solo Exhibition

“The View From Here”  - Solo Exhibition April 5 - 22, 2017

You may take the long view or the close up view, but when you gaze at nature’s beauty, fury, or stillness you are gradually brought into its intrigue. If you gaze long enough it will offer you its gifts.

Artist Statement:

“Literature, painting, music – the most basic lesson that all art teaches us is to stop, look, and listen to life on this planet, including our own lives, as a vastly richer, deeper, more mysterious business than most of the time it ever occurs to us to suspect as we bumble along from day to day on automatic pilot.  In a world that for the most part steers clear of the whole idea of holiness, art is one of the few places left where we can speak to each other of holy things.”      Frederick Buechner, Whistling in the Dark

I often wonder why I paint... why create…?

Do I simply push around the colours with a brush until they form a pleasing image, rework paint into an expression of yet another interpretation of a scene?  Sometimes it seems that I am simply copying or reforming what has been done many times before.
One might say though, "Yes, but this painting, is remade according to who I am, my delights, my sorrows, my vision and senses."  This thought feeds my creativity.

Fulfillment comes when light and colour clash or flow into one another and reflect back to me from the paper, when acrylic paint is burnished to form the look of worn leather or lightly touched to the canvas to form mist.  Paint put to paper or canvas reveals nature’s beauty and mankind’s creations as I see them.

How grateful I am to be able to see, hear, smell and touch - and how grateful I am to live life where I can "glimpse the infinity that hides in the simple sights," and respond creatively to what is.

After setting aside my high school paints and immersing myself in academics and family life, I found my way back to my brushes in 2004 when I took a watercolour class. I attended sketching and painting classes and critique workshops with Cecelia Jurgens, Jack Reid, and Brian Atyeo and have spent many hours mulling over books written by favorite artists who have indirectly been my mentors.  

The members of the Big Sky Artists group have encouraged me on my journey since inviting me to join them and it has been a privilege to show with them annually since 2006.

I paint in watercolour, acrylic and oil media.  Subject wise, I paint what resonates with me, what seems to call me to paint it for some particular, sometimes inexplicable, reason.  Places I have been, images I have seen or imagined or that hold a special memory.  

I hope my paintings will cause you to pause, to call forth in you a feeling of “being there,” a special memory, or perhaps they will awaken within you the desire for more creativity in your life.

“Creativity is a way of living life – no matter what our vocation, or how we earn our living… The creator is not afraid to leap over the ‘accidental fences’ and to plunge into the deep waters of creation. There once again, and in yet another way we lose ourselves to find ourselves…”   Madeleine L’Engle, Walking on Water

My art is represented by and sold through Collector’s Choice Art Gallery, 625D 1^st Ave N., Saskatoon Sk S7K 1X7 Canada  / Phone: 306-665-8300/ Web page: http://www.collectorschoice.ca
2017

Solo Exhibition...

After a rather intense 4 months one show is done and one to go.  The first was a group show with the Big Sky Artists which went very well.

Now it is my solo exhibition at the Gallery - the last one I had there was in 2008!  So it has been awhile. I delivered the final painting today and am looking forward to the opening night on April 6th.

Perhaps after that it will be warm and dry enough to work in the garden!! I am looking forward to being out of doors.

Preparations...

"To live a creative life we must lose our fear of being wrong." 

Joseph Chilton Pearce

Preparations for the Big Sky Artists Show and Sale have been completed and I am waiting for one last watercolour to be framed and all will be ready to transport to the venue. Friday morning we set up and then follow 3 wonderful days of showing our art and chatting with the many wonderful people who come by.  I always seem to fall into some interesting conversations with new people, with other artists, with friends and others. It is encouraging and enlightening.

This year I have painted some smaller landscape works in acrylic and in watercolour I have a few new flower paintings. Along with these are several 'poured' acrylic paintings which I always enjoy doing because the colours run together in such fascinating ways.  There is a series of four small paintings I have simply called Phantom 1, 2, 3, & 4.  This is one of them.

Deciding on the layout for hanging paintings on the 8 x 4' boards is always interesting and after arranging and re-arranging I think I have come up with a layout for the acrylics. Our dining room table measures 6 of the 8 foot length of the board so this is the plan although they will be spread out a bit more.

The final watercolour being framed is of the Nanking Cherry blossoms outside our dining room window.  They are the first flowers to bloom in our yard each spring and offer us a pleasant view as we eat breakfast.

On being a self-learner...

It has been hard to find time and incentive to post lately.

I have been busy painting [since I have a group show and a solo show coming up] while mulling over a statement which caused me some anxiety about how I talk about what I do and subsequently even the 'doing' of what I do.

The anxiety stemmed from a day workshop where various types and mediums of artwork was being evaluated and 'my' pieces did not fair all that well. And yes, there is the feeling that landscapes - my way - are not edgy enough or creatively experimental enough to be considered valuable art.  But I think mostly it might be because of a statement made about the importance of being 'educated' in art and the resulting assumption that, because one does not have a degree in art one does not have the language to communicate with regards to art, and by inference what they do is not really art.

Hmm...  it has taken me a bit of time to hunker down again and just get on with painting, doing it my way, being inspired by others, being guided by the writings of others, and knowing that many who inspire me are self learners...  A self-learner is not the same as "self-taught" [without other's input] but they can co-exist in the same person.  A self-learner takes what they learn through reading, workshops, experimentation, etc, [just not the university classroom!] and applies it to their work - and never mind knowing all the correct jargon!! I absolutely believe that I do not need to know the 'language of colour theory' in order to speak about art which inspires me through colour. But I will likely learn the language as I progress in doing my art.

After home schooling 4 sons who are creative, well educated, but clearly self-learners I understand the importance of learning - what sets a self learner apart mostly is that they choose to focus their learning on what is most essential to what they are doing at the moment.  From there they branch out according to interest and need.

With 10 years of post secondary education and 3 degrees I just refuse to succumb to the 'need/necessity' of another degree, [in fine art] in order to speak more intelligently about the art world, and by inference be worthy of being an artist.  I can read if I want to know more about the history of art, etc. and I will continue to do what I can to further my creativity - and my knowledge! But I will not be badgered into taking another degree in order to be more acceptable in the art world.

So - that is a bit of a rant which I just wanted to let go of!

A few small paintings for our upcoming group show.... 10x10" acrylics.

And this is "Ashley" - my newest daughter-in-law made a quilt for her 'maid of honour' and took a photo of Ashley with it wrapped around her.  I loved the photo so painted this watercolour as a gift for my daughter-in-law.