summer days

I'm having a pretty great summer so far. I'm itching to paint again, but during the Olympics I am setting myself up with my drawing board and parking in front of the TV. After I catch up on everything I've neglected that is!

July 20th I loaded my car in an absolute downpour and made the two-hour trip up to Whistler. By the time I arrived there was a break in the rain and I was able to set up my easel at the weekly artisan market, sponsored by White Dog Studio Gallery, at Nita Lake Lodge. I had been planning to paint the mountains but it was so socked in that I ended up tackling the gardens, not my best subject matter. It was a bit of a losing battle with the weather anyway. I ended up under the awning, trying to stay dry and warm and losing the battle.

The next day, with the weather still flipping me the bird, I gestured back and spent the day at the gallery, instructing a student and painting alongside her. She was eager and willing, and painting in the loft was a real treat:

When I left the gallery that evening, there was a break in the clouds and I saw this view of the back of Blackcomb Mountain, so I proceeded to pull over and photograph it. That was what I'd wanted to paint the day before!



I also spent Sunday at the gallery, getting Eve to the point where she could finish the painting on her own, then loading up my car in the pouring rain again to head home. It was a really fun and productive weekend and I just love working in Penny's gallery.

Since getting home I have been on a mission to find myself a mountain bike. It's tricky working within a strict budget and seeing what amazing bikes are out there. In the end I got a Norco Mountaineer, such a pretty blue and with disc brakes, something I thought I wouldn't be able to get in my price range.
 

It's August tomorrow and that means a getaway to the B.C. interior and some fantastic canoeing this month, plus a couple of art events. Stay tuned for invitations. In the meantime, check out what love at first sight looks like to me:

this weekend

I'm heading up to Whistler this weekend. On Friday afternoon, starting at 2:00, I will be painting at Nita Lake Lodge during the Friday Artisan Market. On Saturday I will be painting at White Dog Studio Gallery, 1074 Millar Creek Road, in Function Junction. See you there?

whistler workshop

For awhile now I've wanted to try teaching a certain painting development technique in a workshop setting. On the third weekend in July I'll have a chance to do just that in a two-day workshop at White Dog Studio Gallery at Whistler. Here is a description of the workshop and the link to the gallery's information page. If interested, please let Penny know immediately as we will need to order materials. If there isn't enough interest to make this happen I will be painting in the gallery that weekend anyway, so do drop by if you're up that way.

BUILDING A THEME  ::  a mixed-technique acrylic painting workshop

Are you attracted by symbolism, aboriginal art and thematic abstract painting?  Do you have a theme or idea you’d like to express but don’t know how?  Would you like to develop a contemporary painting using different techniques in acrylic paint?

Building a Theme is a two-day workshop in which you will create a layered painting using your own symbols and imagery, borrowed symbols and imagery, and inspiration from the workshop setting. You will learn how to incorporate relief printing/stamping, stencil painting and layered brushwork into a unique mixed-technique acrylic artwork. Theories of colour, composition and patterning will be discussed and incorporated. Come with an idea and leave with something beautiful and unique that expresses something important to you.

meet me in the woods

MEET ME IN THE WOODS

 Please join us for an ART SHOW & sale of NEW works by

Janet Essevia, Debra MacArthur, Jim McFarland, Lucy Collings, Andrea Pratt, 

Tatjana Mirkov-Popovicki, and NEW artist Brian Buckrell

PAINTING DEMO with Debra McArthur and Fran Solar - woven metal vessel DEMO

Friday, June 29th 4 pm-8 pm

1074 Millar Creek Rd. Whistler, B.C.

www.whitedogwhistler.com

 Upcoming workshops:

Saturday, July 14:  Jill Charuk - paint you own original

Saturday & Sunday, July 20-21: Andrea Pratt - building a theme

Saturday, July 28:  Elizabeth Harris-Nichols - painting the peaks: plein air Whistler

texture

I love Vancouver as much as the film industry does. There are so many different flavours to this city and the Downtown Eastside is the place I go to find what I can only describe as the most amazing 'texture'. I figured Sunday morning at 8 a.m. would be a good time: few cars, and only a few people, so lots of ops to take photos of buildings and crows.

Then there was the guy who was deeply offended by me taking photos in Canada's poorest neighbourhood. The fact that he was at Main & Hastings, poverty's Ground Zero, was not lost on me. I am very careful when taking photos in areas like this, and try and be as respectful and invisible as possible, but I don't feel I should avoid them either because of fear. So, while shooting a building I heard: "Hey! Take my picture!" behind me and turned around to see him flipping me the bird:



So what did I do? What any self-respecting photographer would do: I took his picture. Then I immediately regretted it as he crossed the street and got right in my face to say, "Is this like going to the zoo for you? Coming down here and taking photos of people minding their own businesses?" I decided it would be better for my health to not tell him that I was photographing buildings and to mind his own business.

missing in action

Yes, I've been MIA. I've written several posts in my head but none of them has actually made it into cyber space. They're still there, though, so while I get my s*** together, here are a few photos from the past month or so. The first shows a pair of eagles in a tree on a misty spring day in Abbotsford:


On the May long weekend I flew up to the Okanagan to visit my cousin and bask in her Paint horse and tipi-filled slice of paradise ... and clean a lot of stalls. But I forgot my camera! It was like forgetting my right arm. I happened to tuck Greg's little Canon point-and-shoot in my bag, though, so got a few photos. Across the Coldstream Valley, looking north:

And Kari assisting in the ultrasounding of a mare with foal at heel:

Back home, the following weekend was the big graduation dinner/dance/red carpet event for number two son. I know ~ I'm far too young to have two high school graduates for kids. :) This was one of my favourite photos of him and his friend Alicia on the red carpet:

Then there was an Arabian horse show:

And a visit to Cathy's. This is one of her inquisitive llamas:

 And her Quarter Horse gelding, Zipper:


Then last weekend it was up the Sea to Sky corridor again to drop some paintings at Whistler.  This was taken at Britannia Beach:

And this one was taken from inside Nita Lake Lodge in Whistler. This hotel houses the train station for the Rocky Mountaineer and -- soon hopefully -- an art gallery!

Stay tuned for art again ... soon.

packing tape

I was doing my shift at the horse rescue today and, while struggling with a roll of packing tape, I said to another volunteer that I'd done the same thing yesterday, as I had been packing up a painting that was on its way to Arkansas. Her response was, "Oh? You sold a painting?" I knew enough not to be offended by her question since I'd fielded similar questions plenty of times before. It wasn't a comment on the quality of my work ("Wow ~ you actually sold something!?") but an innocent comment from someone who doesn't know any other professional artists. Everyone and his dog knows someone who paints as a hobby. Or plays piano for fun. Or quilts. Or or or. Those of us who do it and sell our work, however, are not part of mainstream experience. Many people have never known someone whose job is to make art.

So it wasn't about me, but about mainstream perception. I guess it's my job to try and change that, but it turns out I can be just as lousy as the uninitiated in giving myself respect. For example, I gave away a painting (pictured) on the weekend. It's what I have of value and I needed to say a gigantic thank you to the recipient. But I realize that many people, people who don't know that art can be a Real Job, would never equate a painting valued at $500 with what it requires them to earn $500. (Fortunately, in this case, the recipient is an art lover.)

The moral of the story? I have to quit giving away my art.

back from the void

I'm back! I seem to have lost a couple of weeks of my life. If creativity is considered a positive quality then it follows that it must create a vacuum that needs filling occasionally. I guess I was sucked into it. Fortunately I was able to produce some drawings in the void and now that I'm back I'm eager to get back to the easel, too.

These drawings will be on their way to Invermere soon.

transition

Hush 18" x 36" oil on canvas

I'm starting work on a series of drawings after my recent 'run' on oil landscapes. The large one, above, was the last painting I did and the drawing below is the first drawing. I like to think switching back and forth keeps me from getting stale. What's surprising is that while it takes less time to complete a painting as I become familiar with style/subject/medium, it seems to take longer and longer to draw. Hmmm.


Sleeping Spirit image size 7.5" x 9.5" mixed drawing media on paper

come on spring!

What's the best cure for house arrest? A day trip with my dog, camera and sweetheart of course! (Please don't point out the order of that list!) The first Sunday of April Greg traditionally runs the April Fool's Half Marathon on the Sunshine Coast, from Gibsons to Davis Bay. The weather is always hit and miss and this year was no exception. It may have rained overnight in the city but the snow line, on boarding the ferry in Horseshoe Bay, was ominously low.

Once on the other side, with Greg launched at the bone-chilling start of the race, Coco and I did a little exploring. Even after a long winter when everything looks tired and grey, there's still a certain charm about the villages of Gibson's Landing, Sechelt and Roberts Creek, even if there was slush on the verges in Roberts Creek.










But yes -- light on the horizon! Check out what the day turned into. Without the previous night's cold dump of wet stuff, would the day have looked this spectacular?




"But Mom! The water's still cold!"














"Oh crap -- isn't that the ferry we're supposed to get on?!"





























The complete set is here. (And my obviously better half did an amazing time of 1:51 in the race.)

house arrest

So, I have been on house arrest for seven weeks and it's made me almost crazy with restlessness. I am physically pretty active, as much (if not more) for my mental as my physical health, so when I developed a wicked case of plantar fasciitis in February I thought I was going to lose my mind. Spring is traditionally the time of year I lose my mind anyway, and taking away my most successful coping mechanism (exercise) felt like a death sentence. Hyperbole aside, it's been a long stretch but I have not wasted it. I am now a self-educated 'expert' in bio-mechanics of the foot -- and my wallet is a little lighter because of it, heh.

While comparing/contrasting suicide strategies (am I overstating my case yet? :)) I have also been painting small (11" x 14") landscapes in oil, based on photos I've taken this winter. Pretty good therapy once I got over myself and decided that every painting need not be a masterpiece of style, drama and je ne sais quoi. Solid little landscapes are honest and worthwhile in their own right. These are all studies in the interesting atmospheric conditions, muted tones and filtered light of winter on the west coast, from the Fraser Valley up to Whistler. Feedback welcomed.