This weekend 80 painters, sculptors and artists descend on Annapolis Royal for the 22nd annual outdoor painting festival.
This is my 8th year of participation. I’m not usually a creature of habit – except for the Paint the Town weekend. Continue reading
Images and stories of flowers from my exhibition of paintings at Bear River Artworks Gallery, 1913 Clementsvale Road, Bear River NS.
April 15 – 23, 2017. Daily 1 – 4pm
Paintings can be shipped. Interest-free payment plans available. No HST. Continue reading
My exhibition in Bear River opens in 6 days and I’m finishing up edges of paintings and varnishing and putting the wiring on the backs of the canvases. (Thank you Larry for that part.)
This part is fairly tedious compared to painting and I have to hold myself back from starting anything new.
And now, in my opinion, I am faced with the toughest job – finding titles for the paintings. Continue reading
I usually carry my camera with me wherever I go.
It is my visual assistant, my organizer and my memory.
I can’t stress enough the importance of organizing your photos. Otherwise it’s like throwing thousands of photos into a big cardboard box and rummaging through it every time you need to find one. Continue reading
It’s amazing what a little bit of sunshine and blue sky does to lift spirits at this time of year. Tomorrow we’re expecting 12 Celsius- positively heat wave weather! Although we will likely have at least one more winter storm, in the here and now, it feels and smells like spring. I love it! Continue reading
Earlier this year I was invited to paint a door for a fundraiser for the Yarmouth, Nova Scotia branch of the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia.
At the time I was swamped with painting my musician series and I almost turned down this opportunity. I thought I could be practical and adapt one of my photographs or an existing painting or drawing for the project. That would save time, right? Easy and fast, right? #famouslastwords Continue reading
This painting was an exercise in combining a calligraphic type of line with my usual broad brush strokes. Continue reading
“I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.” – Claude Monet
I just came back from a painting journey to Brier Island. The ocean and meadows were fabulous to experience.. and to paint. Still I couldn’t wait to come home to enjoy the rest of the iris and lupin season. Continue reading
Iris are my favorite personal flowers. The iris in this painting came from blooms in my grandmother’s garden in Toronto over 60 years ago. I paint them every year and think of my mother and grandmother.
My paintings always reflect my state of mine. While I worked on this, I brooded about a problem in my non-painting life that turned this into a very purple and blue painting. But as the week wore on I changed my way of seeing my problem and that’s when I (coincidentally) changed the focal point in the painting to an optimistic yellow iris.
I actually do have some yellow iris like this one, but they didn’t bloom this year. Well, except for on my canvas. 😉
I started this painting outdoors in front of my ‘model’, the flower bed. I have a wonderful pop-up screened tent to protect me from vicious black flies, who are out in full force in spring. The orange curtain is clothes-pinned to reduce the glare from the direct sun.
I bring in the work to refine it in the studio…along with some flowers.
Here you can get a better sense of the size of the painting.
