Pomegranates Reflected

Pomegranate Reflected  Oil  11 x 14  $400

Seasons Greetings one and all!! I hope you've all enjoyed a special holiday season with loved ones and friends. I want to wish each and every one of you the very best for the New Year. May 2013 be your best year yet, filled with good health and happiness, good friends and family, and  beautiful paintings and prosperity.

 

I haven't done a reflective painting in a while and decided to put the pomegranates on glass, to add a bit more compositional interest. I love painting all the rich red nuances of the interior of these luscious fruits.  I tried a few different background fabrics and finally settled on this grey green to compliment the reds.

Pomegranates Reflected

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!

Pineapple

This is a commission I completed recently. My client wanted a full pineapple standing up. I found some tropical fabric in my fabric box which she liked, and she requested a red hibiscus as well. I have to say I struggled with this one because it didn't feel like me at first. I made quite a few changes to the pattern in the fabric, using it more for inspiration, and did a number of grey tone value studies  to work out how to desaturate the background keeping the intensity of colour in the pineapple and flower. I was inspired by the interesting shadow cast by the foliage and I added lots of fun colours to the brown and yellow skin of the fruit. In the end it was all about light, shadow and colour and I enjoyed the process.

 

If you're in Victoria and haven't made it to the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria Christmas Small Works show yet, do drop by and have a look. Many of Victoria's favourite artists have pieces in the show and they are all priced from $100 - $150. It's a wonderful opportunity to give the gift of original art to someone special. In fact you're pretty special yourself, why not take a piece home?!

Pineapple

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. 

 

TD Art Gallery Paint In - A Grand Success!

This past Saturday was the TD Art Gallery Paint In, the biggest and most fun art show of the year. We couldn't have had a more perfect day weather wise. It was beautiful and sunny but not too hot. If you're from the area, you'll know that we've been experiencing a lot of rain, so it was a great relief to see the sunshine. 

Approximately 35,000 art enthusiasts roamed Moss St., a distance of about 10 blocks, being entertained by artists demonstrating their work, by painting on a community canvas, a mural, print making, trying out claywork, all sorts of wonderful opportunities for the public to experience art.

This is my set up. I also had a demo station on the left, along with a community canvas that could be painted on or if you were a little unsure of brushwork you could use oil pastels.

The Community  Canvas was lots of fun. The youngest person to paint was 2 years old, and the eldest was 90. There were lots of hearts, some rainbows, sunshine, flowers, trees, and lots of gestural strokes.

Here's two sisters sharing the bottom of the canvas. In fact the bottom of the canvas was really well worked. All in all it was a great day. I met many art enthusiasts who were interested in my process, and really wanted to understand how a blank canvas evolves into a complete painting. I was also really enjoyed my friends dropping by to say hi. Thanks everyone!!

TD Art Gallery Paint In - A Grand Success!

TD Art Gallery Paint In - Victoria, Canada

 On a Clear Day  Acrylic on Canvas  24 x 48

Summer is finally here and so is the 25th Annual TD Art Gallery Paint In! This Saturday, July 21st, from 11am - 4:30 pm, 150 artists will be displaying and demonstrating their art forms and interacting with the expected 35,000 attendees. The Paint In stretches the entire length of Moss St, from Dallas Rd. to Fort St. I will be located at the corner of Moss and Clover Streets. It's always such a fun day and I really enjoy talking with all of you!

Silk and Persimmons  Oil on Linen  11 x 14

You Can Paint Too!

Please drop by and say hi and add some brushstrokes to the public painting that I will have at my station. If you've never put paint to canvas, here's your chance! Adding a brushstroke gives you the opportunity to enter to win one of two small still life paintings! How fun is that?

As well, I have been juried into the Art Gallery's Summer Small Works Show and Sale. Watch for my two pieces available for sale in this important fund raiser for the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria.

See you at the Paint In!

TD Art Gallery Paint In - Victoria, Canada

Still Life with Starfruit

This is a step by step of a commission that I just completed for a client who is collecting a series of these long narrow still life canvases. I had never thought of painting starfruit because it wasn't a fruit I was at all familiar with, however, it has beautiful form and created an interesting shadow along the edge of the bowl. My client requested this particular cloth, which is an Egyptian Prayer Rug, and the plate is Turkish. It made a nice exotic combination.

 

Because the plate had white in it, the cloth was creamy white, and the starfruit was basically white with touches of yellow and green, I had to evolve into how to create a vibrant colourful painting, as my client and I both love colour. So I started with something I know well - grapes.

I started adding colour and pumped up the vibrancy of the star fruit by bringing out the yellow and green.

I decided at this point that the contrast of the shadow shapes in the cloth were far too strong, (I was working from a few photographs as well as some of it from life) so as I changed the colour of the cloth, I also softened the shadow effect.

This photo was taken inside on my easel and the colours appear very cool. I slept on it and decided to soften the contrast slightly and warm up the lights a bit.

Here is the final painting which I shot outdoors in the shade. The colours came out much warmer here. I felt it was a very busy painting with the patterns in the cloth and plate, so for compositional purposes I softened the colours in the fabric above the plate. 

I find commissions very challenging because they are someone else's inspiration rather than your own. In the end, this painting became one of mine, but I had some moments of struggling. I really like the person I was painting this for, and concentrated on created a thing of beauty for this special client. 

When you paint commissions how do become inspired by the content if it's not necessarily something you would choose to paint?

Still Life with Starfruit

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

Mike Svob Workshop - More

  

This is my second painting in Mike Svob's workshop. This one is in oils, and I was trying to use a colour scheme I don't usually go for. I'm more of a warm palette person. I'd like to try this one again with a warm palette and more intensity to the colours. Below is the reference photo

The second day of the workshop Mike painted in oils. The process was a little different but the concept was the same. We chose a reference or references, created 5 or 6 thumbnails trying different emphasis and compositions.  This is really hard to do and requires a lot of practice to come up with many different scenarios of the same image. Mike just whips them off and has endless ideas. The most important part is breaking the thumbnail into three values - light, midtone, and dark, then paint from the thumbnail instead of the reference, using any colour, as long as it's the same value as the value field in the thumbnail. this process creates a new vision from your reference material. In fact you could paint several paintings from the same reference this way. I'm so excited to practice this new approach and see where it leads me.

Mike Svob Workshop - More

Workshop with Mike Svob

This past weekend I had the good fortune to be able to attend a two day workshop with Mike Svob, an artist from Vancouver BC. His work is collected all over the world and much loved for his wonderful sense of colour. He is a terrific, giving instructor, has a great sense of humour and really worked hard at assisting everyone. As workshops go it was a five star and we all gained valuable knowledge to build on our painting skill base. If you ever get a chance to take a workshop from him, I would highly recommend it. He has a five day workshop coming up in White Rock in August and it's posted on his website if you're interested. He also has a book that you can buy online called Paint Red Hot Landscapes That Sell.

Mike believes in creating value study thumbnails where you can try a variety of scenarios, and if the thumbnails aren't, you don’t go ahead with the painting. The value studies are broken into light, midtone and darks. The values that fall in between are pushed to the value that they are closest to, or as Mike says “whichever value guy he seems to be hanging around with.” Mike believes that value is the most important aspect of a painting and if you get the values right, you can assign just about any colour in that value spot.

Here is Mikes reference photo. He cropped down to the two people on the left. And here is his new design using this reference.

I totally loved that he changed just about everything in terms of colour. It was so exciting to watch the transformation and he did it so effortlessly.

The first day we painted in acrylics and the second day in oils. Below is my reference photo and the acrylic painting that came out of it using his techniques.

Sorry it's a bad photo because I photographed the photograph to save time in searching for it on my computer.

I've been very focused on painting from life for both my still life work and my landscapes in plein air, so this has excited me SO much because I don't have to capture the perfect shot on the perfect day, or wander around looking for a terrific scene being lit by a heavenly beam of light. Not that I don't love plein air of course! But now I can trust myself to make some of it up and have a wonderful time doing it!  I'm sure many of you have been interpreting a great deal more than I was willing to do, so you might not find this so exciting. But this way outside my comfort zone and I'm totally pumped about it!

Workshop with Mike Svob

Plein Air

This past weekend my painting buddy Sharon and I  managed to get in a bit of plein air painting by the seaside in Oak Bay. It was our first time out this season, and of course I forgot a few necessities, like my garden gloves that I use to paint. But the funniest was that I didn't have my usual paint colours, and I realized that I was using someone else's palette. I had brought a box of paints that had been suggested by an instructor for a workshop I took a while back.

 

This scene is just a few hundred yards from the Oak Bay Marina Coffee House, where I will be setting up my still life show tomorrow morning. It will be running the whole month of June, so if you live in the area and are out for a walk along the beach front, drop by for a coffee or bite to eat and enjoy the show! 

This is a Mexican inspired painting that will featured in the show. There will be 7 or 8 other Still Life paintings as well.

Plein Air