A New Start

With a second marriage, to someone named Art (!), and a relocation from B.C. to Ontario, I spent some time adjusting to my new life. Painting seemed a luxury I could not afford as I struggled to fit into a stressful career to which I was unsuited. When the opportunity to paint finally came, I threw myself into it. I bought materials and a drafting table, and read books and painted. I began once again to see myself as an artist. I started with heritage homes, and painted two. I made mistakes, and I learned, and I grew. The third one, the best, was only a sketch when we moved to a new location. Somehow with the move, I lost my focus and the sketch sat unpainted for two more years. Perhaps I paint to get in touch with myself, the way some people journal. I don't really know. But for whatever reason, one day I discovered the sketch, still on the drafting table in the attic, and now covered in dust, and I recalled the work I had put into it. I wondered if it could be salvaged. It was of a home from a picture I took one spring day in Niagara-On-The-Lake. The billow of the pre-confederation Union Jack flag simply had to be painted. And so I found my paints and brushes and finished what I had started.......Eventually, as the kids left the nest, I gained a studio. I put this painting on the wall of that studio as an encouragement. If something had me down, or I doubted myself, I would go to my studio and look at that painting. It somehow gave me confidence.

Beginning to Paint

This is the blog of one emerging artist. All artists have beginnings. This is mine.......

As an only child until nearly 10, I learned to amuse myself. A favorite pastime was drawing, painting, using simple paints, crayons, pastels, and chalk. Art was my favorite class, and my work was sometimes used by teachers as an example for the other students to follow.

With high school came the difficult decision to choose one elective in the first year. I chose music over my beloved art, and joined the band. What with prerequisites and all, I never did study art in school after that. I don't regret learning the flute, however, and I still play from time to time.

The years flew by as I sewed, spun, knit, cross stitched, wove and raised a family. It wasn't until 1995 as a single mom in my mid thirties that the call to paint could no longer be ignored. I bought a calendar done by an artist in a painting style I admired, to see what would happen if I tried to copy her work. In a day and a half I had completed my first painting; a copy of a work by Marilyn Simandle, shown above.

It would be six years before I painted again.