Ba-da-Bing!   Acrylic   10 x 10   $225

If you live in Victoria or are visiting this upcoming weekend, come on down to the TD Art Gallery Paint-In! This Saturday July 19, from 11am - 4:30 pm, 180 artists will be bringing their studios to Moss St., between Fort St and Dallas Rd. An expected 35,000 art enthusiasts will be turning up again this year to take in art in all it's forms! I will be near Fort St. and the Art Gallery. Don't miss the biggest art event of the year! Drop by and say hi, I'd love to see you!

This fun little painting is hot, hot, hot with summer colours!

Mexican Still Life

More Fiesta    Oil    8 x 8   $175

I just can't stop stacking these colourful little Mexican bowls.  This is another of my small works Mexcian series, which will be showing at my studio in the Oak Bay Artists' Spring Studio Tour this upcoming weekend. If you're in the area do drop by I'd love to see you! For the tour brochure click here.

Mexican Still Life

Mexican Still Life

Aguacate   8 x 8   Oil    $175

These hand painted Mexican tiles that I picked up at a garage sale, were perfect as a background to the beautiful colour and shape of the avocado, or aguacate in Spanish, so my son tells me. Avocados are a favourite in my family so they turn up in my small paintings fairly often. And of course it went perfectly with the Mexican theme that I'm on. 

Mexican Still Life

Fiesta - Mexican Still Life

Fiesta   Oil  8 x 8   $175

Hi everyone! I've been focusing on trying to paint regularly, and therefore, I painted but didn't post! So now I'm going to do a bit of catch up. I've been on a Mexican bender! I love my little brightly coloured Mexican bowls and when they are stacked I like them best. My girlfriend loaned me a beautiful piece of hand embroidered fabric from Guatemala, and the combination was just too exciting! A few tomatoes and a Mexican green background brought it all together. This one painted itself! 

Fiesta - Mexican Still Life

More Cooking with Colour

More Cooking with Colour  Oil  SOLD

These little Mexican themed still life paintings have been very popular, so I'm hoping to get a few more done in the next little while. This is the most recent Mexican piece that I've completed. I love the vibrant colours and patterns, and I guess that's what draws people to them.

I was very busy over the summer, going to Vancouver to visit my elderly parents. Unfortunately, at the end of the summer, my dad became very ill and passed away at the age of 90. He lived a very full and happy life and was a devoted family man, who adored his wife, children and grandchildren. We all miss him very much. He was always so pleased with my paintings and enjoyed seeing everything new that I'd completed. Now as I slowly start getting back into painting, I'll be thinking of him and his beautiful smile and I'll try to put some of that goodness into my work.

More Cooking with Colour

Tea and Tonic - AGGV Summer Small Works Show

Tea and Tonic  Oil on Linen on Board  8 x 10  $300 SOLD

In my last post I talked about a workshop I took with Tanya Bone. This painting is one I did following her workshop, focusing on edges, brushwork and a painterly style. I was quite pleased with the outcome and also because it has been selected into the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria Summer Small Works Show. The show runs July 12 - Sept 5, in Massey Hall, and features beautiful small and affordable pieces by many of your favourite Victoria artists. Be sure to check it out when you're in the neighbourhood. 

Tonight I attended the Artists Reception for the Mystery Show at Red Art Gallery. This is such a fun event! There are 40 artists and 40 works. All works are 10 x 10 and priced at $295. The mystery is who painted what? No names appear on the front of the paintings. There is a lottery style draw to determine who gets first pick and so on. When your number is called you have 60 seconds to put a red dot on the painting of your choice. Last year this event was a huge success and a great patron pleaser, and this year promises to be just as much fun. I'll post my mystery painting after the show.

Tea and Tonic - AGGV Summer Small Works Show

Cooking with Colour II

Cooking with Colour II  Oil  8 x 8 SOLD

Here's another colourful still life using my new little Mexican bowls from my recent trip. I think I still have some value adjustments to do on the left side of the pepper.

Cooking with Colour II

Cooking With Colour

Cooking With Colour  Oil on Canvas 8 x 8  SOLD

I knew it was going to be an explosion of colour, but I just had to do it!! I bought  these cute little bowls in Mexico and as I have a special love for hand painted pottery from around the world, I had to incorporate these new little beauties into a painting. I've painted and sold still lifes with plates and bowls from Provence, Morocco, Italy, Tunisia, Turkey and Mexico, so other people must also love hand painted pottery too. So here's some more Mexico and this time it's red hot! I hope you like it.

Cooking With Colour

Art for an Oil Free Coast

Pomegranate and Cranberries

I love the form and colour of pomegranates. They are a bit like pears, in that you really want to paint their shape and colour nuances. I teamed this one up with some glossy little cranberries, and of course my favourite antique wooden box. 

 

 

This past week in Victoria BC, we were privileged to have the "Art for an Oil Free Coast" exhibit, showing at the Victoria Conference Center. Over fifty British Columbia artists including Robert Bateman, Robert Davidson, Roy Henry Vickers, Mike Svob, Janice Robertson and many more, "have created paintings, prints, carvings and sculptures reflecting their experience of this vast wilderness and the beauty of the Great Bear Rainforest and Haida Gwaii. These artists hope to bring attention to the magnificence and ecological diversity of this coast."  It was so incredible to see beautiful and powerful works by all of these artists in one exhibit. Above is the cover of the book that has been published to compliment the exhibit. It is available through Amazon.ca The artworks are blended with poetry and essays to portray the splendor of the region.

If it is built, the Enbridge pipeline will cross pristine British Columbia from the Alberta tar sands, to Kitimat on the west coast, crossing over 700 fresh waterways, (sources of fresh drinking water, spawning grounds for our salmon, and sacred First Nations Lands) arriving on our coast where huge quantities of bitumen will be held in giant tanks on the waters edge. Then supertankers would load up and have to navigate through narrow and dangerous channels, bound for China.  Our entire coast is on the San Andreas Fault Line. Recently there was a 7.8 earthquake in Haida Gwaii just 150 km east of Kitimat. 

The 'Art for an Oil Free Coast' project is organized by the "Raincoast Conservation Foundation, comprised of a team of conservationists and scientists empowered by their research to protect the lands, waters and wildlife of Canada's Raincoast. They regard coastal British Columbia's majestic diversity of plants and animals as assets to nurture rather than resources to exploit." I wholeheartedly agree.

 

(excerpts from "Art for an Oil Free Coast CANADA'S RAINCOAST AT RISK)

 

 

Art for an Oil Free Coast

Quince and Crabapples - SOLD

 

When I saw these quince with the leaves still attached and these vibrant crabapples, I snatched them up quick, because they were asking to be painted! I really enjoyed painting the colour nuances in the shadows of the quince. 

The farm shop I bought these at has a petting zoo attached to it, and the chickens and rooster decided that they liked it better inside the shop. As shoppers were wheeling their carts around and others were at bistro tables enjoying a coffee and baked goods, the chickens were pecking  around between their feet, and every now and then the rooster would cock-a-doodle-do. We had so much fun there! Our cashier told us that sometimes a chicken hops up on a shelf behind the cash desk and lays and egg. That's definitely fresh off the shelf!

Pear with Plums  Oil  8 x 8  SOLD

Wow! What a hiatus that was! This first post in a looonng time is a painting I did or the Art Gallery of Victoria's Christmas Small Works Show, a fund raiser of the Art Gallery. See the side panel for information on the show. 

As some of you may know, I've been taking time away from both painting as regularly as usual and from social media. I've  been helping and visiting my very elderly parents who live in a different city. That combined with an unprecedented number of requests for commissions, has kept me away from smaller daily paintings. My schedule is allowing me get back to painting my own inspirations and concepts. I've learned a lot from this year about both creating art and life:

• there will always be things in life that  may take you away from painting for a while - but you will always get back to it. Take time to enjoy those precious moments.
• I've discovered that for me, painting is tied more closely to my emotions than I thought. When crises happen my emotions are all used up and I have nothing left for painting. It's as if I don't know how to paint anymore. I have to take the time to be with family and then get back to painting.
• Commissions are a wonderful compliment to your work, and also a guaranteed sale, but for me, I find that that they redirect my energies away from my creative fires and my need to realize my own ideas. At the same time I grew in my art while painting several commissions, by pushing through and finding really positive outcomes. I painted subjects I would not have chosen to paint, but in the end created paintings that were in fact me.

I also realized that I must create in order to feel balance in my life. How that creating looks may be different because of time and travel. It may be drawing instead of painting, or working out  compositional thumbnails or jotting down concepts for series with quick sketches and notes to support the idea. It's still a creative process that moves me ahead in my art for when I'm ready to paint again. 

How do you work difficult times that may take you away from your easel? I'd love to hear your tips if you have some. 

 

Three Persimmons

Three Persimmons  Oil on Linen  8 x 8  SOLD

I've been busy in Vancouver with my parents recently so I haven't had a chance to practice the techniques that I learned in Mike Svob's workshop. However, I've been practicing thumbnails, trying to come up with different designs for the same image, and seeing which one is most dynamic, for a future painting. This sounds elementary and easy, but it's actually quite difficult to rethink a photo considering adding gradations,  simplifying the shapes and creating a pattern of three values - light, midtone and dark. If you can get through this step and feel really good about one or two thumbnail designs, the next step of painting from your thumbnail by matching the values, is really freeing. A bit scarey but freeing! I highly recommend you try it. 

This is a little painting a did a while back. I received this beautiful table runner as a gift. It's made from recycled Sari's. The persimmons added to the exotic theme, but it was really all about painting the beaded and sequined fabric. I love exotic fabrics...

Three Persimmons

Silk and Persimmons

Silk and Persimmons  Oil on Linen  11 x 14

This was an experiment with a high horizon line, playing with the rich colours and folds of the silk fabric. I really enjoyed painting the persimmons as well. All the warm nuances and shadows. I'm not sure if I'm completely finished on this one. I may add some glazes in the fabric.

Silk and Persimmons

Bowl of Mandarines

Bowl of Mandarins  Oil on Linen  8 x 8  NFS

I finished this little painting yesterday, and it wasn't until I posted it, that I realized I don't like the dark background. It's too harsh  and cold, with the warm soft colours of the foreground. So I will go back into it and make some changes to the background, and then repost once I've made those changes. I think maybe a subdued wallpaper, or kitchen tiles. Any ideas for the changes?

Bowl of Mandarines

Red Reflected

Red Reflected  Oil on Linen  8 x 10  $300

This one was challenging but a lot of fun. I wanted to create some drama with the lighting, emphasizing the red of the pomegranate, as well as practice painting reflections. I had to really stick to 'paint what you see' because the reflections were not what I expected, in terms of value and colour intensity in some areas. All in all I'm pretty pleased with results.

Red Reflected

Avocado

Avocado  Oil on Linen  6 x 6  NFS

I'M BACK! ! ! I've been very busy for months, and have had the hardest time trying to paint regularly. Then I started painting again and had to keep scraping everything off, or sending the piece to my painting graveyard. Yes, I have one of those. I've never painted an avocado before, and it was kind of fun. I placed it on an old Canada Dry pop crate I have to make it bit more funky. I'm looking forward to reconnecting with my old blogging friends and make some new ones!

I've been busy researching for a new website provider. I need an automated site but one that provides exposure as well.The ones I'm considering are FASO, FolioSnap and Foliotwist. If you have an suggestions or comments or have had a great experience with a website provider, please let me know.

Avocado

Pomegranate Again

This is an updated version of the pomegranate painting I posted early this week. It had a lighter, warmer background, and when I saw it online I thought it looked it too subtle, and posed the question whether I should I darken the background. My blogging buddy Virginia Floyd suggested that it would make a more dramatic painting, so here is the changed version. I'm pleased with outcome. Thanks Virginia!

Pomegranate Again

Pomegranite

Pomegranate  6 x 6  Oil on Linen

I just love the rich reds of pomegranates. They are such a paintable fruit. I'm not sure I like the background, I'm thinking of darkening it. What do you think? Would a darker background improve this little painting?  I'm currently working on some small pieces for the upcoming Small Works Shows, of which there are many around the Christmas season. This is the first of them. 

BTW I've forgotten to tell you that I entered the Daily Paintworks Challenge for the Children of Africa a while back. I'm really pleased to say that my painting sold, and I will be making the donation to the Canadian Red Cross in the next few days.

Pomegranite

Any Title Ideas?

I managed to take a few hours today to finish off this painting, while our visitors went downtown and did a few things. I'll probably make some minor adjustments once I've had time to live with the painting a bit. I don't know what to call this one, so if you have any ideas, I'd love to hear them!

Here I am in my backyard painting in the shade. Yes! we're having a sunny day! Maureen the winner of the Rainy Day Painting Draw, from the Art Gallery Paint-In came by and picked up her prize today, the painting l'Aperitif. She said she felt so lucky to have won the painting, that she almost went out to buy a lottery ticket. :-)

Any Title Ideas?

A Krafty Pair

Original Oil on Linen 8 x 8

I have an old cheese box that was apparently used as a mold for making Kraft Cheddar Cheese. It's definitely a muse for me. I've painted it with a number of supporting actors. I also love painting Red Anjou pears, as the colours go from deep rich reds into paler versions with undertones of ochres. These ones were the paler version. I really loved how the light was hitting the top and left side of the box and reflecting off of the pears. I'll be showing this painting and the one below, along with several more still life paintings and some west coast landscapes, at the TD Art Gallery Paint In this Saturday. I'll be demonstrating still life painting and will have a station set up for anyone who would like to take a moment to paint with me. Then I'll hang your painting across the top of my market tent for the remainder of the day, and you can pick it up toward the end of the Paint-In. If you're in the area, I'd love to see you and chat, and of course spend a few minutes painting with you.

I've been having a very hectic life recently and haven't been getting in nearly enough painting time. We have visitors from France for the next month, but I do hope to get in some plein air painting and post those.

A Bunch of Hotties

I'm reposting this one, as the picture is so much better than the first one I posted. I'm sometimes a little photography challenged. In fact, what improved this one is a layer of varnish which brought back all the darks. Oh the challenges we face!

A Krafty Pair