it's all in/on the tools

I would like to say that this magnificent image is a painting I'm working on.

But alas, I will come clean and say that it's only what ended up on a palette knife just before I scraped it off yesterday.

Inadvertent, accidental, beautiful, unfettered and completely outside of my conscious intention.

The best art comes from that.

been gone so long

I have been remiss in the blogging department. Experts say that one should really blog at least once each week to even HOPE to be recognized by the search engines. I could come up with many terrific excuses, such as....my fingers suddenly became so large that it was impossible to type. But that would only lead to skepticism in addition to not being recognized by the search engines.

But I am going to make a concerted effort to blog more often.
It might be good for me.

show at Agnes Bugera Gallery in Edmonton

I flew out to Edmonton this past saturday to attend the opening of my two person show at Agnes Bugera Gallery. Thankfully, not everyone had left town for the long weekend, and there was a steady stream of people stopping by.
I met Janice Ryan who had written a great review of the show for the Edmonton Journal.

It was great to have some meaningful conversations with people about the work.

A good time was had by all.

the best laid plans

Believe it or not, this is one canvas having gone through an extreme makeover artist edition. I started in March with this great idea: a collage of a vintage image of a woman looking very sad, juxtaposed with a dog leaving the area. It made perfect sense to me. However, as you can see, somewhere it all got lost in translation, and finally, just today in fact, I ended up with what I feel is a really good painting.
Phew!
Good thing I have learned a thing or two about surrender.

too busy to blog

I suppose it's a really good problem to have...being too busy painting, to blog about painting. There's a great line in an even greater old movie ('the more the merrier' 1943) where Charles Coburn's character says that there are two kinds of people in the world: those who write in diaries, and those who are out doing the things the other people write about in their diaries.
I was struck by this little passage, and even went so far as to write it down in my journal.
Oh dear, I suppose that makes me someone who writes in her diary about those who are out doing the things that people like me write in their diaries about. Oh well.

I have been very busy preparing for a two-person show coming in a few weeks at Agnes Bugera Gallery in Edmonton. That's my story about why I haven't been blogging more these past many weeks and I am sticking to it.

Around she goes.

it ain't over until the amply proportioned woman sings

Here's another pair of 'before and afters'. A lot of water under this bridge for sure. And time too. I started this one in January and it's now March. It's not that I work on them continuously, but more that they hang around in various stages of dress (or undress, depending on how well things are going) and I go back into them with fresher eyes. As I said a while back, I am always working on more than one canvas.

I love how this one came out.

Because she has a song

"A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song" (Maya Angelou).

I've posted two images, an early one from when I was just starting out on this canvas a few weeks ago, and below it, the finished painting. As often happens, there isn't much from the first few marks that has survived the heat of the creative fire. But one thing that came early and stayed late - all the way through to be exact - was that singing bird.

I expect she must have quite a song.

HEARTSPEAK event a lovely affair

Well, the weather outside was frightful, but the company was so delightful as those who braved the pelting rain yesterday found out at my annual heartspeak event. We had a lovely time. Even the Barbies were into it.


I have posted the unsold work here on my website.

headed for winnipeg, ends up in saskatoon

I love it when the unexpected happens while I'm working; when I discover something willy nilly; when I set out for Winnipeg and end up in Saskatoon. Call it divine will, kismet, or a favorite of artists around the world - the happy accident.

I use a lot of stamps in my work and with the exception of commercially prepared alphabet letters, I make them myself. I make them out of cheap and cheerful and decidedly non-precious, neo-crude, peri-conceptual materials like styrofoam and cardboard.

In the first image here, I used a large cardboard heart to apply paint early on in the process. The thing about stamps loaded with acrylic paint, is that after you've pressed them down onto the canvas, when you go to pull the stamp away, some of the paint gets sucked back off and out, away from the canvas and forms little peaks and valleys which when dry, remain as little peaks and valleys. Of course one could smooth it all out while the paint is still wet, but that would mean missing at least half the fun of the printmaking endeavour, which simply put, is that you never know for sure what you have until you have it, and no matter how many times you use the same printing block/stamp, the results will be different every time.

But I digress.

This painting is called "heart in hand" and it will be in my HEARTSPEAK studio event this Saturday. I've enlarged a section of it to point out the aforementioned peaks and valleys effect which became very visible after many delicate washes of colour, rubbed on with a damp cloth. What thrilled me this time, is that I ended up with an effect which is very reminiscent of the systems of arteries and veins that course through and around the heart. I couldn't have made that point with any more poignancy if I had tried.

Another happy accident. Another afternoon in Saskatoon.

what makes a painting a painting?

I was working on this little piece today and I couldn't help but notice the sheer volume of paint on the backdrop surface. This is where I discharge excess paint from my brushes, or mix colours as I go.

Since a picture is worth a thousand words, the second shot below, pans out to show the small painting imbedded in the backdrop.

Looking at it, one might well ask just exactly how much paint is not on the painting itself. And then one might further ask, is the 'intentional' painting (the one I set out to paint) really any better than the unintentional painting. The intentional painting benefits from conscious effort, a trained eye, and a certain amount of discipline. But the other one, the one I didn't mean to paint, perhaps benefits from not having those very same qualities.

Over the years, I've had many offers from patrons wishing to buy my background wall(s).
Are they on to something?

a bedroom is a studio by another name

Here's another painting underway. I always work on more than one at a time, sometimes as many as 4 or 5. And it's not like I have a big studio, you know, the huge manhattan loft fantasy with exposed brick walls, polished concrete floors, and controlled rent. No, I paint in a room in my house. A bedroom, to be exact.

Years ago, one of my mentors, a Vancouver dealer, took me to the outskirts of the city to visit a painter in his studio. This fellow was very prolific, very professional, with a booming career. His work was courageous and cutting edge and filled with integrity.

And yes, he painted in a bedroom out there in his modest suburban bungalow.

I came across a great book a while back, Inside the Painter's Studio by Joe Fig. It's a series of interviews with, as you might have guessed, painters. This is Chuck Close:

"I can make art anywhere, any time....I mean, I know so many artists for whom having the perfect space is somehow essential. They spend years designing, building, outfitting the perfect space, and then when it is just about time to get to work, they'll sell that place and build another one. It seems more often than not, a way to keep from having to work. You know, once I have my back to the room, I could be anywhere. I could be in Sheila Norgate's bedroom."

OK, so I added that last bit. But really, I am so totally with Chuck on this one.

testing for done-ness

Here's a painting under way. It's not done yet, and there's no telling what might happen as I stand there and continue to throw paint (and caution) to the wind. I won't know what will stay and what will go, until it's all over.

It's a little like how I used to test spaghetti noodles for done-ness back in the 1970s when my hostessing skills were still rather rudimentary.

I would throw it on the ceiling.
If it stayed up there, it was done.

rose red

An artist I have never met called me the other day to say she was selling some acrylic paint and was I interested. I asked her what brand it was, and when she said Stevenson's I decided to go over. That's my brand and I'm sticking to it.

She had some colours I normally use and some I don't normally use. I try to keep to a fairly limited palette to start off with, and that way I can make things up as I go. I am a better painter because of this practice, at least as far as colour theory goes. Not that I have ever been asked at a dinner party, to name the analogous hue closest to yellow-green or explain the merits of the tetradic colour scheme.

But she had some of this one colour "rose red". There was something about it that grabbed me and I brought home all three jars.

The woman who sold me the paint is gravely ill. She is unable to walk. She is moving away to be closer to family. She will never paint again.

There was something about it that grabbed me.

It's all about the painting

I have decided to put my eggs in one basket as it were, and limit my blogospheric musings to matters more directly related to my practice as a painter.

I know many of my women readers (there must be at least six) will be aghast at this turn of events, because they have been counting on me to provide charm and beauty tips as I conduct research for my new book, Dangerous Curves. But I promise to do everything in my power to get this book published as soon as possible or during my lifetime (which ever comes first) and will keep you posted when any large developments take place. In the meantime, do the best you can with what you have at hand.

So above then, is a brand new painting called "love struck", part of a body of work I am creating for my annual Heartspeak studio show. I was having a chat with one of my dealers the other day, and she posited that my work had perhaps become a tad too cerebral for the average art buyer. She was referring in particular, to my troubled attachment to Sigmund Freud and offered in as sensitive a manner as she could muster, that not everyone gets it. So I have decided to rest my psychoanalytical case for a while at least, and just throw some paint around.

It's a serious lot of fun.

Dogs Replacing Drugs in Therapy for Stress

I was reading just the other day in the Province newspaper, that the US government is spending millions of dollars on a pilot program that provides trained psychiatric service dogs for war veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress. According to the home page of the US Army website, "Medication works 50 percent of the time. Talk therapy alone, works 30 percent of the time, and dogs work 84.5 percent of the time."

I could have told them this for the price of a handful of biscuits.

Wiener Dog Fills in for Baby Jesus in Bizarre Creche Incident

I had a New Year's Eve party at my house the other night, and among the many mysterious and wondrous things that happened, was the deliberate alteration of one of my carefully and artfully placed decorative scenes. Yes, at some point in the revelry, someone committed a creche infraction.
The weiner dog was there when the party started because this set of vintage wise men did not come with a baby Jesus. But the scene took a whole other turn when a mystery guest placed the dog on its back nestled in a tissue bedroll, and placed a ripple potato chip between its front legs.
You can dress some friends up....

Photo by Laura Lasby who assures me that she merely documented the result and was in no way involved in the actual alteration.