Shanty

My cousin Heather asked me to do this commission of Shanty, in her memory. A great family dog, Shanty loved to go out on the sailboat, and run along the beach with Heather's boys, Cameron and Stewart. In fact, the photo that this painting was based upon, was taken just after one such west coast run. Ultimately, however, she was Heather's dog, and I was honored to paint this tribute to a beloved canine friend.

Mrs. Tillson's Inspiration

When I tour a heritage home museum such as Annandale in Tillsonburg, formost in my mind is the question: Who were these people who lived here so long ago. I want to know what their lives were like. How they were like us; how they were different. What did they value? Are we ultimately the same?
Through careful artistic sutdy, painting a portrait helps me to know my subject better. This painting is a tribute to Mary Ann Tillson who was directly inspired by Oscar Wilde in the decoration of her home, Annandale House.

Catnap In China

Moments like this don't come along very often. It's one thing to arrange teacups, but quite another to pose a cat. So when I chanced upon Orville as he is seen here, I had to find the camera fast.
My goal in this painting was to capture the glow of the sunbeam, as well as the warmth of the areas in shadow.

Cobalt Blue

Although this is not a large painting, measuring only 7" x 11", it is a tribute to my brushes and paints. In fact, you could say that I used these brushes to paint these brushes. As for the paints, the few shown here are a primary color representation of the dozens of tubes that I own. I confess a weakness for collecting paints. To me the tubes are like seeds of color waiting to grow into a vibrant painting.

Update: On June 29 I received notice that Cobalt Blue has been accepted for exhibit in Open Water 2009, the 84th Annual Open Juried Exhibition of the Canadian Society of Painters in Watercolour. The exhibition runs from September 5th to October 24th at the Leighton Art Centre in Calgary, Alberta.

Only 63 paintings were accepted out of over 300 images that were submitted!

Tea Cups and Yellow

While working on the previous two paintings, I kept thinking of yellow. It was something like a food craving; I needed to paint bright sunny lemon yellow. Perhaps the time of year had something to do with it. There won't be daffodils for another month, and winter has been so long and drab. The landscape all around is a monotone of yellow ochre, or the color of mouldy straw. But that is okay. I can paint yellow. I can paint in colors that sing like canaries until the spring comes.

Blue China and Glass

As soon as I finished Bookland, I wanted to do another still life. There is something especially rewarding in painting my own arrangement. Painting the things that I own deepens the experience as well. For example, the tea cup on the left is special; it was a wedding shower gift given to my grandmother some eighty years ago.

Late winter may be a dull time of year overall, but there is brilliance and beauty if you take the time to look for it.

Update: In May this piece was one of 48 out of 188 entries selected for Woodstock Art Gallery's 51st Annual Juried Exhibition, Visual Elements. This was a thrilling first for me!

Journeys Through Bookland

I have been collecting china tea cups on and off for years, planning to do more still life compositions similar to the first painting that I did over thirteen years ago. Tea cups and books. When I found the old children's book "Journeys Through Bookland", (printed in 1922) in a thrift store, I had the inspiration I needed.

This is a personal piece for me, representing some of my favorite simple pleasures. A pot of tea, something historical to read, a winter sunbeam and a sleepy cat. The title of the book is important as well, since nearly every day for me is a journey through book land; I work at two libraries.

Practically speaking, this was probably the most detailed piece I have ever done, taking many hours to complete. Wicker again! What was I thinking?! It measures 16" x 30", which for me is large.

And thank you Orville (the cat) for holding your pose while I arranged the pieces.

Crabapple Tea

For a long time, I had wanted to paint reflective glass. Like the distorted patterns found in waves or other reflective surfaces, painting glass is like entering the world of abstract art within a realistic painting. I once saw a painting done depicting a jumble of copper pots, as if it were the subject matter of a very difficult jigsaw puzzle. Looking carefully, I could see the artist herself reflected in a multitude of bizarrely distorted ways, stranger even than in a carnival mirror.

I chose a simple enough subject, yet was surprised by how detailed and complex it was to paint. Not easy, but satisfying.

Watersoluble Oil

About three years ago, I bought a set of 'water mixable' oil paints. Seemingly a contradiction since we all know that oil and water don't mix, these paints really do just that. Oil painters can now paint without harsh chemicals, and watermedia painters, such as myself, may cautiously dip their toe in the mixable water, so to speak. So even though this blog entry is technically an oil painting, it still qualifies as 'light painted with water'.

I knew I wanted to give these oil paints a try when I bought them, but I had no idea it would take so long to get around to it. Oils have intimidated me. That is what other painters do. The ones who went to art school and learned all the rules. So when I finished this painting, using my self taught transferable skills, I gained a new sense of confidence. I felt like saying: HA! I just did an oil painting, so there!

In some ways I liked the experience, and in other ways I did not. I soon realized that what I liked about it were the ways in which it was similar to watercolor painting, and what I disliked were the ways in which it was not like watercolor painting. It was a nice place to visit, but it just wasn't home. Transparent watercolor remains my media of choice.

Pink Iris

Overall, 2008 had been a slow year for painting. As the year drew to a close, I finally finished this beautiful iris that had been started many months before during the studio tour. It sat, propped up on my drafting table, calling out to me to come and paint. It was nearly complete, but I knew it needed something more. At last, I darkened the background, and the petals burst forth in colorful triumph.

Luke's Hope

My daughter Annie, see blog entry November 20 2005, met Luke a year after that portrait was done. Two years later, on a snowy stroll through Niagara-On-the-Lake, they became engaged.
By the end of that uncharacteristicly overwhelming week, Luke had also bought the home that they will share after the big day in August.
Luke is a great guy and perfect for Annie, but what to get a son-in-law-to-be for Christmas?

A house that was new in 1904, is now new again. New with the hope of a couple beginning a life together. New with the anticipation of family and friends and music and laughter and life. A house with a heritage, now a home with a future.

His gift was a painting of that hope.

The Workshop

I had been asked to give a one day instructional workshop to members of the Brant Visual Artists' Guild to be held in St George. There would be between 15 and 20 intermediate level adult watercolour students in attendance, all of them strangers. Although challenged by the offer, as this would be my first workshop, I felt confident that I could do it since I have always liked to teach.

The topic would be pet portraiture. I broke down the steps taken to paint the Zephyr portrait (shown in the previous post) and would use this painting as my main teaching example. But a couple of days before the event, it occurred to me that some students might prefer to paint a cat instead of a dog. I quickly decided to add a kitten photo from a royalty free website. This was fortunate, since the kitten was the preferred choice of many. I have noticed that artists and cats (and avid readers) often go together.

I have heard that the definition of an expert is a person in the room that knows more about a subject than anyone else. Here I was showing others what I had learned, and being treated as an expert on the topic............ Who, me?!......... Perhaps I had more to offer on that topic than the others, but 'expert' is a relative concept. So often I hear teachers say that they learn so much from their students, and it is true. We all learn from each other, and there is still so much to learn. I was just showing what I had acquired up to this point on my artistic journey.

And it was a thrill.

Thanks Pam, and members of the BVAG.

Oh Zephyr!

Our time raising Zephyr for the National Service Dogs was quickly coming to an end. (See the blog post of Aug 30 2007). We had trained and nurtured him for nearly a year and a half, and he thought of himself as part of the family. We nearly did as well, but we held on to the belief that his was a more noble future. Knowing that we would only have him for a few more weeks, I took him out for a photo shoot. As usual, he happily obliged, and this portrait is the result.

There had been the usual puppy mishaps, the inevitable slipper chewing, the house training accidents and the like. But as he grew, we discovered that he was becoming a very strong dog, and was generally more excitable than his peers. Great strength combined with over excitability are not traits sought after for service dogs, and we became concerned. Sure enough, only two weeks into his four month professional training, we were informed that Zephyr had been "released from the program". Did we want to keep him? We could cover the cost that he had incurred to the service organization, such as vet fees, and he would be ours. Or we could pass him along to another group, and with little hesitation, we agreed that he should be given another try. For the second time, we said our good-byes as he went off to school, this time the Lions Club Guide Dogs of Canada. We had hopes that with the chance of training for one of their four categories of service (seeing, hearing, physical, and seizure) he would soon find his place.

I always said that Zephyr was a 'boomerang' dog due to his great ability to retrieve, but I hadn't expected that to also mean that he would keep on bouncing back to us. We were informed that he did not have the right stuff for Guide Dogs either. Better, perhaps, but still short of the mark.

As I write this in March 2009, Zephyr is on his third try. His retrieving skills may be his salvation, since, based on his enthusiasm and tenacity in ball retrieval, he easily passed the qualification trials for yet another school. He is now training with the Canada Border Services Agency to become a 'sniffer' dog of contraband goods. I am optimistic about this match...we'll see.............................

Katie and Raffles

After the studio tour, I slipped once again into a season without painting. First came the simultaneous training at two new part time jobs, then an illness, surgery and slow recovery. My dad suggested I paint while convalescing, but I just wasn't up for it. Although not physically demanding, painting takes mental energy, something like a chess game. Watching old movies was more my speed. Finally, in the fall, after a couple of trips away, I was ready for a fresh start.

A co-worker had seen my blog, and asked me to paint her aunt's two cats. This would be my first double portrait. Intended as a gift for Christmas, I had plenty of time to work on it, which was great because my time now had become so limited.

Katie, the tortoise shell, and the "marmalade" Raffles, are not friendly towards each other. Their posing together was not likely to happen, and to complicate it further, Robyn had to slip the reference photos to me without detection from her aunt, this being a surprise gift. It was a new challenge for me to coordinate the scale of the two images, crop and arrange the subjects into a unified piece.

I was struck by how similar these two cats were with our own, Friskey and Orville, shown in the photo.

Oxford County Studio Tour 2008

The idea of a studio tour is that visitors may observe a number of artists working or displaying their art within their own studio. Brochures are distributed showing which artist may be found where, within a specific region. Most tours last for a couple of days, usually over a weekend, and groups of artistically minded friends often travel together for a fun day's outing.

I moved my drafting table to the main floor and was able to work on a painting while visitors looked over my works. My living room had temporarily become my very own art gallery. It was a challenging and exciting adventure, and I'll be doing it again April 4 & 5 2009.

Amaryllis

This macro floral was painted in my usual way. I then mounted it onto a wooden panel and trimed the paper edges. The one inch panel sides were painted in casein, an opaque artist's paint. When dry, the whole thing was sprayed multiple times with a clear matte protective finish. In this way a watercolor painting may be hung without glass. It gives the painting a bold presence, resembling a work done in oil or acrylic.

Lovebirds

This one was a lot of fun. After painting numerous fur bearing animals, it was time to give feathers a try. I found an image that had potential, but I wasn't satisfied with how the birds were distributed on their perch. I printed out the image anyway, and then literally cut and pasted until I had my eureka moment and was satisfied with the composition. I especially love the colors of these birds. This painting is a lenghty 30" long.

Potted Amaryllis

The soft backlighting from the window is effective in this composition to highlight the delicate beauty of transperant petals. I am not much of a gardener myself; I would much rather paint a flower, than attempt to keep one alive!

Pink Lily

I really love it when a painting turns out realistically. It's one of the thrills I get when painting. As a realism painter, it is a goal that I strive for. I knew I was onto something with this beautiful lily when, as I painted, the photo illusion began to fool even me. This painting will be published in the Oxford Studio Tour 2009 brochure.

Poppy

This was not the first poppy I had painted, the other one had been done experimentally on watercolor canvas. This was done conventionally on 300 lb watercolor paper, as I nearly always use. Multiple glazes of pigment were used to bring out the flower's depth and vibrancy.