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. 

 

Twilight

Original Oil on Canvas Panel 10 x 8 SOLD

Free Shipping Canada and USA

Here's a quick little painting of a moment last summer on the edge of a lake at twilight. Such peace and tranquility. Exactly why we holiday!

I recently commented on Lorraine Shirkus blog and she appreciated my comment. So I went back to see what I had said, and thought hmm... not a bad explanation. Maybe I should share that on my own blog.

Lorraine was questioning the artists' expression "Paint what you see" and I responded with my interpretation of those words: "I think painting what you see", means to see and capture the tonal value, colour temperature, light, reflections, the colour in the shadows, all the things that make a painting from life beautiful. From there, how we make our marks, whether we want to blend the paint into refined realism, or create a more abstracted version of what we see, is what makes the painting ours. It's our signature. I hope that interpretation has some value for some of you. I think I'll attach it to my easel, I'm sure it could be valuable to me!

Twilight

Chez Monette

Chez Monette
Acrylic on Exhibition Canvas   24 x 24  $600 + s/h


I'm really pleased to be part of the Autumn Show 2010 in the Victoria Airport Arrivals and Departures Lounge. I received lots of feedback on the last show that featured my Jazz Series. This new show will feature some of my Still Life paintings. I haven't been able to see the shows because I'm not traveling so I don't have authorization to enter the area. Darn!

I enjoy painting the sculptural, sensual forms of pears and I really love painting textiles. In this case the textile was a lace edged linen tablecloth. The embroidery was quite complicated and I thought how am I going to simplify that? So I really squinted the whole time I was painting the lace edge and tried to capture values, rather than trying to recreate the actual pattern of the embroidery. I wasn't sure if it was going to work, and I had one of those 'please don't wreck this painting' moments, but in the end I was really pleased with the effect. So I highly recommend squinting! I'll post another one or two of the Airport paintings over the next few days.

Chez Monette

Lavender Field

Original Oil Painting - Plein Air   8 x 10  $125 Free Shipping

This is the lavender field that we were so fortunate to spend a morning painting. Unfortunately, on the way to farm, I suddenly discovered I'd lost my glasses! I tried to make the best of a blurry moment but never quite got into the zone. If I was to do it again I would probably reduce the size of the willow tree and move it over by the barn, with maybe a branch overlapping. It was hard to decide what viewpoint to paint from. I wanted to paint in the shade, but eventually chose full sunshine so I was looking up the rows of lavender. I worried through the whole painting about my glasses, but there was a happy ending to the story. After hours of retracing my footsteps, I found them on the lawn in my backyard, next to the sprinkler!

 

Lavender Field

En Provence

Original Acrylic on Exhibition Canvas
Image painted over all Four Sides
24 x 24  $800 + s/h


I completed this painting last summer, as part of a show entitled Mediterranean Moments. I did the still life set up with props that I owned, and was given a huge, beautiful lavender bouquet by a friend of a friend. The owner of the lavender has a lavender farm on her property, and as she is also an artist she went above and beyond to get the lavender to me, in perfect shape. I was deeply grateful. I then needed a background for the set up, and having lived in France, I had photos of lavender fields in my photo file. But to place the still life in front of a field from a photo was rather tricky. I was very nervous to try this and didn't want to ruin a good still life with a bad background, so I decided to paint the background first, thereby eliminating unnecessary work if it turned out poorly. The next tricky part was depicting the hot Mediterranean sun. I did many set ups in full sun at various times of day, and took even more photographs, finally arriving at this design. The last challenging part was painting all that white! White is so hard to paint! Very little of it is actually white. Because of all the lavender in the painting, I mixed a variety of temperatures and tones of lavender grey. In the end it was a great experience which I believe grew my painting skills. So don't be afraid to try something difficult. When we push ourselves we grow.

En Provence