Fireweed

My dad was telling me about his recent reminiscences of time spent in northern BC, and of how he remembered the profusion of wildflowers that grow there. I thought to myself how a painting of those flowers would make a nice little Father's Day gift. So I duly got busy and painted this incredible field of fireweed. But just as I was giving him the little 5 x 8 piece, a realization hit me that it wasn't fireweed, that he was missing, but rather Indian paint brush. I had painted the wrong flower! We had a good laugh over that one. Oh well. His birthday is next month.
Here I am continuing my adventures with casein paint. I've actually taken things to the next level by making my own. Milk and acid and alkali and water and pigment and you have casein paint. Not that hard to do. Really. This paint is so versatile.

Naniamo

Just when I was considering what I would paint next, I got an email from Carole, an artist friend with a change of address notice. They were downsizing to an apartment with a view of the water in Naniamo, BC. I looked up the area, and found this image, near to where they will be living. This is a small painting, about 7 inches square, done on paper in that exciting 6,000 year old 'new' paint medium, casein.
About a week earlier, I got inspired to find out all that I could about the media. If you look online, you will find that there is not too much out there, but what there is is fascinating. I was getting hooked.

Ocean Park

After more than half my life inland and far away, I've returned to the Pacific coast. Home is where you're from, and now I'm home. Ocean Park is on the western tip of the Semiahmoo peninsula, a quiet gem near White Rock, between the US border and Vancouver. Views like this are common, and are shared with bald eagles. 
Yet another water based media, this was painted opaquely as well as transparently using casein.  Pronounced kay-seen, it is a pigmented binder, or glue, made from a protein found in milk. Binder plus pigment equals paint. Ten years ago, I did a painting of the infamous kitten, George Michael, looking out our window. As a generally overlooked paint, it has great potential.

The Heron at Crescent Beach

Last fall, I was at Crescent Beach, near White Rock BC, and captured an image of this heron as the sun was setting. I took it on my smart phone, and from there it went to Instagram in the requisite square format. It was one of those rare right place at the right time photos, and I especially liked it. It made sense to paint it. This is done in acrylic, my first attempt in that medium. Acrylic is a very popular water based paint, but because of it's handling characteristics, I suspected that I wouldn't like it, and hadn't been in a hurry to try it. An art store's closeout sale finally compelled me to buy a small acrylic set. I can't say that painting in this medium was for me a terrible experience, but it was at least a learning one. I did it on 140 lb watercolor paper, and was amazed to find that by the time the painting was finished, the paper had become plasticized, like a vinyl coated tablecloth. 

Mitzi

Kathleen is our neighbour, and although she has a dog now, years ago she had this beautiful cat, Mitzi. She is a fantastic gardener, and must miss the pond that she had at her previous home. This painting is a tribute to Mitzi, and to that lovely garden hideaway in Vancouver.

Ice Cream

As I was working on the Lemonade painting, I was also putting the finishing touches on a painting that I had started years ago. I'm not sure why it had not been finished, other than it had become a victim of one too many moves, and had for a while gotten lost in the shuffle. Working on the piece reminded me of the hot, humid tourist season in the little town of Bayfield, Ontario, where I had some of my work in a gallery. 

Garden Tour

Every year in June the Rotary Club of Chilliwack puts on a garden tour featuring especially amazing yards and gardens of area residents. I had a great time getting photo references of roses and all manner of fabulous garden views from about a dozen or so very different gardens. Now I can paint summer gardens all year long if I like. This landscape is taken from a very special property high atop Chilliwack Mountain overlooking the Fraser River. The painting is small for this much detail, only 8x10", and was my second attempt at gouache. It has been such a long time since I painted an outdoor scene, and I was surprised by how similar it looks in style to my watercolour landscapes. This time I painted on cold pressed watercolour paper which I found to be easier to work on than the smooth surfaced mat board that I used on the gouache horse.

Home

This will always be home, although I haven't lived here for decades. Bought in the 1950s and owned by my dad, I can still go home. But not quite. This is a composite painting, taken from pictures dating from 1957 to 1973. The house and yard never quite looked like this at any one time. Paint and flowers change, shrubs come and go. In fact, the house is now all yellow siding with bay windows.
And yet.........this is the home of my childhood, of my memories. I can always go home.

Jersey Remembered

I was asked to paint another portrait of Jersey, this time from a photo of her standing in a field. I hadn't done a landscape, which really is what this would be, in a long time, so that would be a challenging change. Also, Tim and Melissa requested that it be done very large, to go over their mantle. Twenty-two inches by 30 inches seemed like a lot of paper after working for so long on an 8"x10" surface.

I wanted to convey the sense of bigness of the sky and field, and yet not loose Jersey in the landscape, since, after all, this was a painting about her. She will be remembered here in this harvest time field near the family cottage on Lake Huron.

Wrong Side of the Tracks

My friend Maureen and her large family had a beautiful fifteen acre farm along the Thompson River in BC. They accessed their land by crossing a major rail line. Eventually track expanded and the rail company forced my friend and their neighbours off their properties. They were paid for the land but not for their homes. It would be up to the home owners to sell and move their buildings, intact or for scrap; if left the rail company would tear them down. This was my friend's dream home, only about ten years old. I think I painted this as a way for me to mourn their loss.

Casein

I don't know how it happened, but I started to get interested in an opaque medium called casein. Paint is applied like oil or acrylic and has similar characteristics. It is thinned with water but doesn't harden on the pallete the way acrylic does, so it sounded ideal. There is not much information on this fairly obscure medium, so I started reading books on oil painting technique. The self-taught approach kicked into research mode as I read everything I could from the local libraries. I was peeking over the fence so to speak into the land of an entirely different way to paint. It was a strange country where a foreign language was spoken. Impasto? Scumbling? Gesso?

After the research, it was time to try it. Theory and practice. Both are good. As I had done in the past, I turned to the work of an artist I admired, in this case acclaimed oil painter Caroline Jasper. Although I was working in casein, the method was the same, and I copied her piece entitled "Expectations". She (and therefore I) started this painting by painting everything red. What a strange thing it was to dab thick white paint over a dark surface. But fun too. See that little mistake? Well now you see it, now you don't...ha ha ha.

This wasn't Kansas anymore.

Kelly Vee

My uncle, I call him Uncle, is about as intensly interested in car racing as my dad is interested in tug boats. That intensity must run in the family. After following racing for decades, he finally left the spectator stands and bought his own race car, the vintage Kelly Vee, which he races himself. Not bad for a 65 year old. I saw him race once, and I saved the best photo I took for a painting. A suprise Christmas gift. I did only this one Christmas painting , as opposed to the previous year when I did six, which was kind of a lot.

Naramata Vineyard 2

I feel better about this one, but I still see room for improvement. Stronger colors, mainly. Although the biggest challenge was getting the sage brush right. What a beautiful place this was; on Okanagan Lake, overlooking Summerland.

Naramata Vineyard 1

I don't know if landscapes are really my thing. I took lots of reference photos of BC on my visit with the hopes of painting the land I love and miss. Yet I wasn't too happy with the paintings I did. Especially this one. I am sure I could improve my technique if I practiced. But do I want to do landscapes? I don't know.

Late Swim

I happened to be in the right place at the right time with my camera when these girls jumped. The sun had set behind them but there was still time for one last swim. It was at about this time, somewhere between day and night, that the loons began their haunting call.

This was my first painting to be rented out in an Art Gallery rental program, a special milestone for me.

Cottage Country

The great thing about photographing provincial park landscapes, is that no one may question what you are doing, unlike houses. Of course, Northern Ontario is a beautiful place, even if it is lacking the mountains I was used to, having come from BC. So the camping trip was an ideal opportunity to capture landscapes that were begging to be photographed. On this trip I also sketched.

Now some artists will take all manner of painting equipment out with them and paint right out there on location. They get very good at knowing exactly what to take right down to the sun hat and the bug spray. They also manage to shrink their art materials down to a very tidy little bundle, suitable for long hikes in the bush. They call it "Plein Air" painting, after the french for fresh air. It is especially popular in the UK. I however, was not quite up for all that. A sketch book and pencils would suffice. And of course, my trusty camera.

I sat on this Pre-Cambrian Canadian Sheild rock for a very long time one evening, sketching the lake and the rock and the trees. Actually, as I found, disecting the scene I was painting, the way an artist does, while being a living part of that environment myself, was a powerful experience. I wasn't only deeply seeing what was before me, but I was breathing it and hearing it and feeling it myself. I know my backside certainly was feeling it......

The sketch was an experience, but a painting was what I wanted.