I feel very behind the scenes this past few weeks. I've been busy working on a couple of orders, writing proposals and getting all my paperwork in order for tax time. I'm ready to be posting some new work at the end of this week. I have to laugh sometimes because an artist is usually measured by their social media output and so when I slack off on putting fresh work up online, I feel like people think I'm probably busy reading romance novels or something! 

I have a couple of demonstrations and classes I am excited about in the next few weeks - all centered around linocut printmaking. I have a particular fondness for working with people who are new to a particular art form. The opportunity to empower someone to step out of their comfort zone and build a new skill (and work with sharp tools) gets me quite excited. These are usually my favorite kinds of classes to teach. 

March 24th - Visiting artist to the Cochrane Ranchehouse In conjunction with my show upstairs at the Ranchehouse, I will be set up in the main foyer with my tools and ink demonstrating printmaking from 1pm - 3pm. This is a beautiful location and I'm looking forward to sharing my art with the locals. Find out more here.

March 25th - Leighton Art Centre, Calgary Basic Linocut Printmaking This will be a one day workshop where beginner and intermediate students will be walked through cutting, inking and printing thier own linocut blocks. You can register here.

April 1st and 2nd - Kelowna Art Gallery Basic Linocut Printmaking This is a two day intensive workshop where we will explore all sorts of the possiblilites of linocut from craft to fine art. Class size is limited so registering soon is recommended, You can do that here.

Looking forward to getting out of the studio in the next few weeks. I'll also be posting some new work in the coming days so stay tuned! 

 I am kind of excited about this! The Historic Downtown Cochrane Visitor Information Centre commissioned me to do a series of flour sack clothes that will be on sale at their downtown location! 

These are special Cowboy Boot designs with "Cochrane, AB" hand stamped on each. I won't be producing this design for sale anywhere else but for them. You can check them out in person - click here for address and hours.

Here is the full variety of designs available - each a one of a kind piece of art!

I've been feeling cooped up lately. A combination of bad winter roads and extreme windchill temperatures has kept me mostly housebound for the past week. One of my regular outings is with my dog where I tend to let my mind wander as I soak in the various colours that can be found in the piles of white snow everywhere. 

 This painting is from a reference shot I took at one of my all time favourite places, Glenbow Ranch Provincial Park. We moved partly to be a lot closer to this beautiful places like this and I am looking forward to nicer days where I can explore again. When I was looking for my next subject, this image struck me because of all the blues and golds found in the sky and the snow. It felt bright, windy and cold to me.

 I have a habit of collecting tiny little cups, bowls and plates on my travels. If it has a hand painted pattern, I find it very hard to resist adding it to the odd sized stacks in my cupboard. Many of these things get used for tiny amounts of sauce or to hold pieces of a craft projects. I like that they they step in to be used in a variety of ways.

 I don't think I've ever painted this little cup (or bowl?) before. I bought it in a market in Istanbul a few years ago. Although the walls look nice and sturdy, the glaze is fragile and chips easily. I unearthed it the other day in my art supplies where it was holding odd pieces of chalk. I decided I needed it out in the open so I could trace it's pattern and see the effects of different light hitting it. I gave it a new use, sitting near my chair where loose buttons and hair elastics land. It has brought me quiet joy in the past few weeks. 

 As I have been pushing into this new series, I have realized that I have been craving pattern and technical detail. This piece was a tricky delight to paint all the light hitting the plate underneath my little cup. Phthalo blue has an unashamed starring role in this piece. I feel like I've embraced my flaws by using it so much! 

Winter has really settled in and a few days ago I found myself looking through my reference file for my next painting subject. All the pictures of crisp late summer mountain forests were calling to me. There is something magical about the greenish mountain waters - they seem somehow more ancient than the same river miles away on the flatland. 

I took this picture a few months back up in Canmore, on the path that flanks the Bow River. This was a fun family day because we took our kids and our dog, Ivy, on this path. The dog was entertaining to watch as she crashed around the bushes trying to find the resident elk that were grazing nearby. 

I am still enjoying this limited palette. I did use phthalo blue again, but I've learned to accept my rule bending. I have really been challenged in a good way to really pay attention to the values in each piece. I'm continually struck by the harmony this small choice of colours brings - not only to each piece but to the whole series. 

I have been in the mood for something technically challenging and this painting was just what I needed. Elliptical lines, highly detailed patterns and inky blacks were all things I wrestled to solve within this piece.

I will admit, I cheated a little on my limited palette. I have also decided that it is okay within this series to have one additional colour per painting if needed. I was fighting to blend some deeper shades using cobalt blue, cadmium red and burnt umber but they were not taking me where I wanted to go. I was resorting to thin washes to build up a black colour and I wanted to apply paint quicker and thicker. I fell back on a small smudge of phthalo blue to push everything darker. I was trying to avoid such a dominant blue (my over reliance on phthalo blue was one of the reasons why I stripped my palette black – it is too easy for it to take over once you start tinting it).
​
This works and I still feel like this painting is feeling balanced. The phthalo blue is like the occasional treat on a diet – one colour in a painting won’t ruin all your hard work everywhere else. Besides - it’s something to maintain sanity, like a nice piece of chocolate!  

 It feels good to post something different. This is the first completed piece using my limited palette. It is bright and fresh and blue, but not too bright, too fresh, too blue. It feels balanced.

 I've been really inspired by the trail system by our new house. In a matter of minutes one can get swallowed into the trees and loose track of civilization. Every day I walk these paths with my dog and lately I've looked forward to the soft stillness. The light has been lasting a little longer late in the afternoon. That magic hour in January has grand, long stretched out shadows because the sun is so low in the sky. I hope this painting reflects that. I want people to feel that cold crunch of snow underfoot and feel the silence. . 

 Things have been busy lately. One of the things I am working on is a series of paintings on my newly minted Wall of Shame. For those of you unfamiliar with my strangely titled work space, I like to display a row of blank canvasses on a wall that I can see frequently. The sight of those empty canvasses is enough to shame me into finishing them... hence the name.

 Over the holidays, I was dragging my feet to get started on a series of work that are solely drafted by me. I realized I needed something compelling to get me going. After taking stock of what was lacking and I realized I needed some boundaries. Taking my cue from how people typically feel in the beginning of January, I decided to put myself on a bit of a diet. Over the years, flashy tubes of paints have been making their home more and more in my studio. While I love colour, I feel like I’ve been seduced with vibrant rainbows, living in a place where the hue saturation is always set to the loudest volume. This is where my diet from colour comes in – my palette cleanse.

 When I first learned to paint, we were restricted to a limited palette for years and years, mixing everything as close as we could with only a small choice of colour. I am very thankful for those years because I am pretty accurate when forced into it. My latest studio work will be a return to my roots, executed with a 5 tube palette of yellow, red, blue, umber and white. I’m still tweaking the exact hues and I may experiment with an even more limited palette later on, but for now this works.

 As I’ve been working like this for the past couple weeks, already I’m feeling refreshed. Having to pay closer attention to the values, stretching myself to mix greys that aren’t too muddy and spending more time composing the layout are all benefitting my work. I just booked a show at the Cochrane Ranchehouse in March where I plan to debut some of these pieces.

 My work outside the studio is not necessarily going to follow those rules. This weekend, I am honoured to be painting live at the Airdrie Mayor’s Night of the Arts (tickets available here) and I might be sneaking some tubes of green and violet with me! 

 This painting marks the end of a wonderful journey – I have completed the Intersection Art Project!  I am very grateful to Encompass Partnerships and all the partners I got to work with this past year for opening the door on their organizations and allowing me to visually share on their behalf the work that they do that makes a difference in Calgary and the surrounding area. I’m thankful for your efforts and my eyes have been opened not only to the challenges that many people in our city face but to the sacrificial work done by many in order to lend a hand to those who need it.

 I think it is apt that the feature of this painting is two friends sharing about their lives, this is a great note to end on. The organization this piece is for is Cooperative ESL Ministries which ironically, does not teach ESL directly to newcomers to Canada. I learned that they focus their time on equipping a variety of organizations with the skills and resources to welcome immigrants and refugees into their communities, primarily by offering ESL classes and building relationships through that.  Language is a huge factor in acclimatizing to a new country or culture. The most basic things like shopping or navigating paperwork can be enormously complicated if you do not understand the local language. For someone who is new to the area and might not know anyone who can help them overcome these challenges, a new culture can be an enormous shift. This organization aims to help people navigate through this time with the end result being that these people have been fully welcomed into the community. 

 In this painting, I started off with a hearth (traditionally the centre of the home) and then added two people in conversation. This is on a surface level to show the welcoming nature of the hearth, but on a deeper level to show that these two people are sharing about themselves with a common language - which speaks to CESLM’s mission. By being able to share in a common language, the bond of friendship strengthens. It is a painting about the desired outcome - the stranger is welcomed in and becomes familiar.

​  This past year has been a great journey, I am so glad that I have had the chance to be welcomed in at Encompass and for all the new friends I have made along the way! 

Another year, another year in review blog post... so much has changed, and yet so little. I find it funny, every year I dig up a few posts from previous years so I can see what it was I was excited about at the end of the year and it is always the same and yet totally different. Cycles of time I guess.

I’ve found that 2016 has been a good year for me, personally.  It has also been a year of different creative output – not as many paintings as usual. The paintings I have done have mostly been big, which is such a treat. Instead I’ve been dabbling in other media and producing different types of work. Some of it is ready for the eye of the public, some of it is still in it’s infancy so, best kept under wraps until my skill develops.

My top ten list this year – things that I’ve learned in 2016:

1. I find it very, very interesting to collaborate with non artists on paintings. This year’s painting body of work is predominantly from the Intersection Art Project. Each piece was born from meeting a group of people from their non-profit organization and discussing their work, their mandate and visual ideas that came to mind to represent them. Translating all of this information into a painting was quite challenging and exhilarating; doing this 9 times was a bit of a feat!

 

1.  Instructing puts the wind in my sails. I lead a pretty solitary existence most of my week. My husband and kids leave for the day and I hang out with my dog in my studio. Interspersed in here is my weekly trip to help at the museum and the occasional coffee date with friends. This year, I added in a lot more instructing and it was like a light was turned on – that chance to spend a day pouring out all the words I have locked up about a topic I love to people who are there because they want to learn. I meet the best people in my classes; I also tend to learn a bunch of related stuff too.

 

1. You can totally have too many art supplies. We moved this year from Airdrie to Cochrane after 11 wonderful years. Our house was quite small and my studio interests were quickly outgrowing the tiny space we had carved out. August/September this year was a crazy, crazy blur of packing, driving, moving, unpacking, teaching, and making. Once I had boxed up all my gear and realized that containers marked “studio” were in the obscene majority, I came to accept that I probably have a problem that needs to be addressed. Sometime. Not now.

 

1. I need a target to aim for. I already knew this before, but 2016 reminded me of that. Unless I have an upcoming show or market or project to create for, I find it hard to narrow my focus. This gives me a reason to get up and make stuff. It puts me into a driven frame of mind and lots of things get born that probably wouldn’t otherwise if I was just free to tinker in my studio aimlessly. I’ve found that the best approach for me is to start of my year with a couple unrelated targets and press the “start” button – the year pretty much fills itself up from there.

 

1. I cannot have two closely related projects going at the same time. I don’t like the idea of multitasking, in fact, when people boast about their ability to jump from one thing to the next I usually assume they have an overly inflated opinion about their skill set. I realized this on the Wycliffe project and confirmed it during the Intersection Art Project – I can’t paint two different bodies of work at the same time. Splitting my focus = two less focussed projects. All is not lost though, if I have a painting project and a printmaking/letterpress project running concurrently I’m totally fine. So I did lots of that this year.

 

1. Letterpress keeps calling to me. Confession: a few years ago, I lugged around a little rusty press with no idea where to start or how to use it. I thought it was interesting and I could not be parted from it. It went from basement storage area to basement storage area till I was ready. Then I took steps to learn about it and fix it. Then Letterpress said “you’re ready” and more equipment came into my life. More friends came to help me get to the next step. I still hardly know what I’m doing but I’m advancing slowly. I think 2017 will be good for me in that area.

 

1. You should not take apart crazy huge cast iron machines unsupervised. Which is why I have direction at the museum in taking apart my full sized platen press – this thing is a complicated hot mess of interlocking parts and they all have to fit back together in a particular order. I am continually blessed and thankful to be able to learn in this environment. This large press would never have been feasible to restore if I didn’t have my museum connections.

 

1. There are more ways I can obsess over patterns. Plate and teacup paintings are not the only areas where I get to play with repetition. This year I made a jump from printmaking framed art to block printing on fabric. There is something about laying down a cloth and composing a pattern using patterned elements that is intensely satisfying to me. The play of form and colour and the humble nature of the support all speak to me creatively.

 

1. I will totally buy a household appliance based on how I can incorporate it in my art practice. We needed a new washer and dryer for our new house and because the space was big enough, I insisted on a top loading washer so I could get back into dying fabric. The first batch of flour sack tea towels that came out of the machine may have been met with a high pitched squeal. I could care less about all the other laundry though.

 

1. My focus continues to be about learning over legacy. In late 2015 I made a decision that I would lead a life worth living – tasting new moments rather than living in a rut. My goals are primarily experience driven over profit driven – I think it reflects in my body work this year especially. Lots of new mediums and experiments that incorporate many elements/subjects that I’ve been playing with for years. Variations on a theme I guess. As I plan out my steps for 2017, this continues to be my focus. Experiencing and learning – this helps me to avoid getting stuck or too self focused.

 
This has been a good year. Lots of change that I have yet to process and lots of art supplies still waiting to be unpacked and organized. I am really looking forward to the New Year as well. I’m always a sucker for a fresh day timer and new adventure.