Monday, May 28, 2012

Stepping Out

June is a busy month. The Works is on in Edmonton, a festival of culture in the form of many creative pursuits: music, theatre, visual arts, formal and informal. There are street performances everywhere. As part of that Harcourt House (10215 112 St. Edmonton) opens its doors to the public with two exhibitions and an invitation to visit artists in their studios. I submitted five drawings for the “Naked Show” with the possibility of having one to three showing. ‘Stepping Out’ was one of the ones rejected. It should be a great show. The drawings are all from this past year’s work done in the Annex with a live model. I will submit drawings for the Member show “Symbiosis” which opens in the main gallery on the same night, June 21st at 6:30pm. Two drawings have also been selected for show in the Federation of Canadian Artists’ Gallery in Vancouver (1241 Cartwright St. Granville Is.) I am in the process of framing and packaging them for delivery by June 7th.The exhibition runs from June 12th to 24th.  June 7th also sees me doing demonstrations in the foyer of St. Albert Place as part of the ArtWalk for St. Albert (5 St. Anne St.) which coincides with the opening of the fundraising event for the Art Gallery of St. Albert (19 Perron St.). I have one drawing in that as well. The month begins however with another fundraiser at Holy Family Parish in St. Albert (75 Poirier Ave.) at 6pm on June 1st. I am preparing a mixed media panel that I will finish onsite during the evening. It will be auctioned off at the end in the hopes of garnering mega dollars for a foundation that supports several farming and community activities in Nicaragua (Roots of Change). To finish things off there is an unveiling of vignettes and tableaus in the St. Jean Baptiste Park in Morinville on June 24th probably in the afternoon. I will keep you posted on that event. In the meantime I am going swimming. Have a great week!

Monday, May 21, 2012

Palettes

Doctors’ offices are great places to catch up on reading. I was glancing through a book on colour and came across the section on how to lay out a palette and the thought occurred to me that that might be a topic of interest for some people as not many watercolourists I know do things exactly the way I do them. So here is how I lay out my colours. I keep lids off jars of jam, pickles, condiments, anything that has a white interior so I can better see the colour wash within it. I squirt some water into each lid and add the colour I choose from the moistened tray to the point of intensity I wish. A test paper is essential to determine the intensity. I keep adding colour until I am satisfied. I repeat the process with each colour so that the colours I choose each have a brush, a wash and the original block. Some artists squeeze the watercolour straight out of the tube for greater intensity. I find I can make use of every bit and have very intense colour if I fill my tray, let it dry and moisten it just before I paint. Intensity comes from the quality of the paint as the higher the quality the greater the pigment content. I also limit the number of colours I use at one time. With the painting I am working on at the moment only six colours are set out with their washes. There is a seventh brush which I use to soften edges or add paler layers of pigment in certain areas. I rarely mix colours before I put them on the paper. Instead I begin with one wash and drop in other colours while it is still wet so that the mingling and mixing occurs right before my eyes. It is such fun watching the colours swirl. When I leave for the day I know that my lids, brushes and tray will be dry by the time I return. I simply add water and carry on. Love it!

Monday, May 14, 2012

More Murals-Military Vignette

This was an accident. I had been called in to give some free advice and I got another job. It is amazing how charity and prosperity are linked. Our oldest son had the same experience: a volunteer computer maintenance position at his high school fostered his first job. When I live in abundance, giving with no strings attached, a flow is created that usually results in my receiving tenfold more than I gave… This particular vignette (a name chosen because of its small size--three feet by four) presented particular problems. I had three reference photos with three different horizon lines and I wanted to put them all on the same horizon. There was too much of a difference between the scene on the left which had been photographed standing in the street and the one on the right which must have been taken from a cherry picker. Separating them seemed appropriate. Separating them all with use of the street worked quite well. In the end I ended up with this image that was not entirely working but the deadline loomed. I handed it in for approval with the suggestion that I move the cenotaphs to the left to balance the space better. Another suggestion was forthcoming in that I reverse the order of the monuments as well as moving them. Brilliant! The lady who did the research for me supported the change in spite of the fact it creates chronological disorder. So now the task of painting is at hand. I so enjoy mucking with the paint in the first layers. That is a very technical term: mucking. It means having fun! I better get on with it… the deadline is tomorrow!

Monday, May 7, 2012

Invitation to Seek


Well, I have started a new series in watercolour. The mixed media image I am working on might take the rest of my life to complete! Tackling more than one project usually gets me going in the right direction. I had the painting done but I could not leave this watercolour without a poem. I did not include a psalm but the poem is laced through the branches and hidden in the shadows. It speaks of invitation to seek something more in this life. The spot is near Spirit Island in Maligne Lake in Jasper. It is only reachable by boat so there is no traffic, no motorized vehicles. There is a peace that permeates the air and calls us to hug a tree. The one drawback is there is usually no time to just sit and ponder. The boat comes and goes on schedule. I have to be in a very quiet place, a place I usually find only within myself, before I can hear the counsels of the soul. Spirit Island is well named. My studio is also a quiet place. Most of the time I listen to the radio, Tempo and Shift on CBC. Sometimes I seek the silence in order to listen. I enjoy the silence.


Invitation: To Seek
Seek and you will find
connections, new energy, 
linking all in all.

Invitation: Chercher
Les arbres nous parlent, donc,
cherchons la perle dans leurs mots:
travaillons ensemble.