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.