Why and Wherefore?

Back from the Okanagan.  A refreshing and stimulating trip.  Got exercise, sun, relaxation and art (saw Margaret Glew's wonderful show at Sopa Fine Arts) out of 4 days away.  Coming home I've had lots of day-jobs catch up and excitement of studio visits and selling some more work.  Very encouraging. I can't believe I'm managing to get by month to month with working from home, being my own boss, doing stuff I like doing for the most part. I have set 3 whole days a week aside for painting and everything else gets done (or not) in the other 4.  The income from art still won't support me, the other jobs I do mean I just make it every month,  but doing what I want to do is a big bonus in this life.

The work is shifting. Like I said in the last post, the landscape is moving into non-objective work.  Still very much about experience in nature though. Since I've come back I started a larger piece than I've worked on for a while.  It still needs work.  I keep looking at it and waiting for it to tell me what to do.  Not very much I don't think. But those are famous last words. Here it is so far.  It's 30 x 36".

Why this change?  I don't feel that non-objective or abstract art is in any way better or more advanced than representation. I feel the representational work and this work are explorations that's all.  I can say that I've felt the need for a some time to work more abstractly or non-objectively and had been going back and forth in the landscape work from more to less representational.  The way was cleared to this way of working only recently.

Since I first learned to draw and paint and then went to art school I have only worked representationally for this past couple of years. It was my way back into painting when I felt lost. It was a way to start, a way to build my confidence again, a way to explore some things that I had put aside both in and after art school.  Things like drawing from life, and paint handling and colour theory.  But, I have always felt the need to work from the inside out.  And in this work I'm doing that.  Let's see where it goes.  It's a dance this art making thing.

You can find some of my new work posted on my website now.  Take a look.  

Here is a painting I did at the very beginning of this change.  It's a transition piece. I guess.  It's 5 x 7" oil on paper.

Delving Underneath

Here I am in a huge rush packing ..two days before I head out for a 3 or 4 day camping trip. First one of the year. I need to deliver some work to a group show in Kelowna and it is a good excuse to get outdoors and make a trip out of it. I can't afford hotels and I love to spend time outside so I camp using a car top tent, talked about here last year.The weather is supposed to be spectacular!  Meantime the art business has been good. I traded some art for expensive dental work this month, and sold 6 small pieces. This is very encouraging. 2013 has been very good so far.

Of course, I am now on a different track from the work that has been selling, isn't that the way? Can't just let things alone gotta keep on moving/growing. It has to be that way, otherwise there would be no art, it would just dry up and go away.

Lots and lots of experimentation and delving underneath the look of things to something else. While on the road I'm going to try to get some hours with paint and paper but this time not abstracted landscape plein air painting but non objective, non representational work. It still is very involved with nature and landscape.

I will try and get some of the new work posted to my website when I come back. I posted some to Facebook if you are not on Facebook and haven't been following my posts and want to have a peek at them click here.

Here is the latest just for you.  Not posted to Facebook or anything yet.

Underneath it All
Oil on gessoed paper
5 x 7"

Abstracted

Isolated Peak

Change is afoot here in the studio. It's been an eventful winter.  It started off with a project to paint at least 10 paintings from my September road trip to the mountains (you can see some here). 

I decided I would explore my memories, photos and drawings in paint.  I didn't get as much plein air painting in as I wanted last summer and fall so I planned to make up for it in the studio during the winter.  Where I settled in with my mountains.

I noticed as I worked that I kept working to bring the mountain paintings into an other world, other than the representational. This has been my project with painting all along, moving from straight representation to something else. I feel the flow was really there for a lot of the mountain paintings but working from photos seems to hold me back a bit. 

By the time I had painted 13 studies (which were actually small paintings all on their own) and 3 larger pieces from my favourites the mountains were explored and they took me to a new place.  A place where I was breaking loose from the representational all together. Don't you hate it when that happens, you think you are going one place and you end up at another. Well, not really, I suppose, I don't hate it.  I love it.

My project to learn about paint, and painting, painting from life, representing what I see, painting en plein air, painting period  ..is about painting. It's about finding my way in paint again, finding what I need to do. The learning never stops. Here I am experimenting, able to break loose, able to let go of my preconceived notions and just paint. This is a good place to be.  

Since I finished the mountains, several new pieces have come out of that growth and I posted them to FB (see one below). Many FB friends whose opinions I value have supported the change to even less representation. Many connections whom I thought might not like this change have surprised me with their encouragement.  Thank you. It gets lonely here in the studio and it's great I'm not just talking to myself in here.  Just goes to show ..don't make any assumptions.

Something has been freed up.  Here's hoping this happy situation continues.  As someone I respect once said,  "I don't think any painter worth their weight in cobalt would admit to having a 24/7/365 seamless day in the studio"  So this is a good day, and there have been several. Tomorrow is another day and tomorrow I will learn something more, if I'm lucky.

Looks Like Dreaming 

Art Exhibit

You're Invited.  I have two small oils on canvas in this event.  Come out on February 8 from 6-10.  I'll be there.  The work will be up until February 17 by appointment.  Contact me through Facebook or through my website if you want to have a look after opening night. 

Life, going and coming, and carrying on.

I've been out of the studio for a 3 days catching up on other life events, house and office work.  Here's what I did:

1. made two boxes for storage
3. worked on course material for painting class
2. designed and photoshopped a colour mixing instruction sheet for painting class
3. cleaned, swept, laundered, grocery shopped
4. taught a painting class
5. printed up address labels
5. made 3 dinners for 4. (I'm feeding the upstairs out-of-laws for the first week they are home with baby)
6. visited in hospital and welcomed upstairs baby to life and later welcomed to home
7. walked dog every day
8. spent an afternoon on Brunswick Point walking and sitting, where I drank hot tea and ate a muffin,  cheese and sliced pork winter picnic.
9. watched Downton Abbey (best part: mansion of reduced circumstances involves having only 8 servants and still owning 1/2 a village, I almost fell of my chair laughing).
10: watched other TV (including Breaking Bad, which is really good and quite different from Downton Abbey).
11. read Alison Thomas's Portraits of Women. Not finished.
12. etc.  tired of listing now

Family members have been having ups and downs, one death in the family ..of an uncle whom I didn't know very well but felt sad about, the second last of my mother's brothers. One birth ..see above. One serious operation, successfully completed (see sister to far left in portrait below).

Before the break I finished the "Sisters" portrait.  Only made a few more changes, letting it go now.

Sisters 9 x 12" oil on art board

Development and Developments

Things are picking up around here.  I've started to teach from my studio. It's amazing how things can roll along once you start something.  If you follow me on Facebook you know that last month I ran into a woman on the running/walking trail near my home while I was photographing.  We got into a little conversation and the upshot of it was that she asked about studying art with me.  Being one to go with the flow, I said, "why not".   Then one thing led to another. I now have three students and possibly a 4th. 

Of course. it means art making time has been shortened, but I've surprised myself at how much I've accomplished given the holidays and the new courses I have had to develop and prepare for and teach.

I took a little break from painting the mountains to work on a portrait of my sisters that I've wanted to do for a while.  It feels close to finished.  I'm working differently from the last portrait posted here.  Loosening up more, leaving more to the imagination.  I'm, truthfully, not sure how it's working but the point for me is to develop, experiment and learn with each new painting.

Here are two stages of the painting.  I'm waiting awhile before I go back in to it. Waiting to see what absolutely must be done so I don't overwork and over fuss it.  The colours in the second photo are bluer than the real painting.

Sisters, in progress, oil and acrylic on board, 9 x 12"

Meantime this week I hope to finish the two larger mountain paintings I'm working on and post them here and be well on the way with a third.  I'd better get on that now!

I have plans for another series after the 10 or 12 mountains. It's so exciting to be so pulled along by things I want to do.  Winter is good for me that way.  Summer is more fragmented and a time for gathering rather than producing it seems.  Though that's when I get to go outside to photograph, paint and draw.

Stay tuned for mountain photos, soon. 

Isolated Mountain, Connection and Contemplation

Still working on the mountains, exploring, exploring. There is a lot of contemplation going into this new work. I decided to paint in oil on panel for the first larger piece made from the acrylic studies.  First I did a pencil drawing from the painted study, then started on the larger oil painting. It is pretty far along but still needs some looking and thinking and painting.  Once I get a second larger piece finished I may post some photos. I will also soon post some of the painted studies on Etsy and on my Small Works Blog.

Isolated Mountain (study)

This has been a good year, I've sold a lot of the work I made in 2011 and 2012. I had work in 3 shows (one a small solo show) and have 2 pieces in another show in February. I even had some work on television on NBC's Parenthood.  I had a couple of commissions. I've managed to stay afloat one more year financially and do what I really want to do. Thank you to everybody who bought my work and who supported me in "real" life, on Facebook and here on my blog with your comments and your liking.  I feel connected and appreciated because of you.

I got a student 3 weeks ago. She is taking a 6 week course in drawing from me in my studio. This is working out really well. It's given me the little push I needed to start submitting proposals to teach painting and workshops at colleges and other teaching organizations and to let people know I am interested in teaching again. Since then I have met a couple of people at holiday get-togethers who want to take a course from me in my studio. So, things can happen when you are ready and put it out there.

This will be my last post of 2012 so Happy New Year and, if you celebrate, have a wonderful Christmas.