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