Being alone is not a new thing for many artists. Lots of us spend solitary days inside our minds, inside our studios. It is a bit of a dichotomy, since we are the monitors of our society, expressing its beauty, its angst, its troubles and its joys. We are the canary of the veritable coal mine of our planet, our population, our culture, our gender, our creed, our environment, did I miss anything? Many artists are simply here to predictably render the surroundings they find beauty in, a mountain, a stream, a field, a backyard lane and much more, gets rendered in a style that represents it but doesn’t necessarily define it photographically. We then are treated to an enhanced version of what is seen by one’s naked eye. Their efforts enhance and itemize the beauty of the scene. I’ve been an artist who appears to be of that ilk, for many years, refining techniques that I learned early in life. As I have aged I have sought to minimalize my style, bring it down to bare bones, and leave out the distracting details. In 2004 I was diagnosed with cancer in my eye and faced the all too real […] Read More
Some of us are deep into our isolation. We are about to break free from the chrysalis of our time alone. Our world begins to open up after quarentine. My life has had self isolation as a theme for many years. I moved into a boarding house while I was in high school. I kept a lot to myself. I got through art school by scrimping and saving. I have lived in the country since 1979, most of my adult life. I do well being alone, expecially now. I have had great mentors for it and have taken my cues from them and how they coped. It is my creativity that saves me. We all may have internal dialogue and I have always revelled in what i call ‘head painting’. I carefully imagine a scene, or use the one in front of me. I begin to imagine painting it, lay down the initial colours. I then define the colours, add strength and character, light and dark…its an internal activity that then gets acted out when the canvas/paper and paint are within reach. Here is one of my stones watercolours. I have spent many hours watching water… What we do in […] Read More
Life is indeed a work of art, for me, for you too? We gradually learn the dance, the ups the downs, the crowns and the thorns. As a teenager, I had gone to Buddist meditation sessions, and before that, had attended Quaker meetings (which involve several minutes of silence at each meeting). I was hungry, and they served food afterwards, at both meetings. I learned important lessons at the time that I was unaware of …at the time. I was hungry in many ways. Most mornings I do a series of yoga poses. I have for many years. I learned basic Hatha yoga from a woman I knew named Ineka. In the small Ontario town I had chosen to live in, she had too, she taught us what she knew, yoga. Most of us were from somewhere else> Almost 50 years hense…my life is an accumulation of the art of life all this time. It is like this image, it includes reflections, both real an imaginary. I make connections to the world around me with my subject, my sense of colour, texture, balance and conflict. As each years piles upon another my imagery takes on new dimensions, new subjects, new […] Read More
Years ago I regularly traveled to Bermuda. I accidently found a niche there with my artowrk. Sudie Curtice and Amanda Outerbridge at Windjammer Gallery, happily sold my watercolours there for 17 years. Sadly, my patron and gallery owner, Sudie, passed away and after a while the gallery closed. I think of those days often, here in the dead of an Ontario winter. yes the sun has crossed the equinox and we now have 9 hours and 53 minutes of daylight. Read More
For many years I have been painting images of water. It began at a stressful juncture of my life and I have used the images as a continuing challenge for creativity as well as mindfullness. Creating rythmic imagery has a calming effect on me, the artist. I can tell from feedback about the works, that they create that same calm feeling when looked upon. I am grateful for that. These three acrylics are called ‘Black Water’. They are for sale on Artbomb …or from me here 560$ plus shipping and taxes Read More
People often ask me how long a piece takes to create. these days I tell them almost 50 years, as long as I have been practicing my art. There is no clock in my studio. time takes on a different value here. It moves to its own drummer. I often put an album on repeat when I am here. That way no change in atmosphere can break my paint spell. Sometimes the day passes in a flash- other times each second is experienced, recorded, with full awareness. The scratching of the brush whilst laying on a scumble often attracts my attention. The sound tells me something I need to know about the paint. The tug or the pull or glide of the brush tells me a tale that I, as the artist, only knows. Read More
My creative process begins long before it ‘appears’ in ‘real’ life. They say it takes 10,000 hours to become masterful at a skill. Some multitude of those hours are encoded in the thought processes that go on in the beginning, middle and end of creation. My studio is part of my home, I’ve worked like that all my creative life. When I did murals, museum work and stage sets, I would immerse myself in that place, creating the environment by being in and of it. I would live waking and dreaming of this monumental art I was creating, until it was finished. At times, the ordinary moments of life- doing the dishes, folding laundry, sweeping a floor- the kinds of activities that hardly need a lot of attention (having done them all my 60+ years), are exactly the formula for creative thought. I can go places in my mind and create pieces there. I can solve issues, imagine new colours or old colours, and explore new ideas. This exploration and extrapolation are where the creative process begins, only then does the actual, physical painting process begin. Like Life, paintings rarely turn out as planned. No matter, I don’t think they are supposed to. They […] Read More
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