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.