I’ve been immersed in a hefty coffee table book from the library called The Writer’s Garden: how gardens inspired the world’s great authors. As the title suggests, these literary giants found creative fuel in their personal gardens—sanctuaries of beauty, and solitude.
Many of them dreamed of a self-sustaining life, planting sprawling vegetable gardens, fruit trees, and berry bushes alongside beautiful flower beds. Some chose the lifestyle to stretch a modest income and make room for writing. Others used their royalties to create the dream environment they had long imagined. But all of them shared one thing: a deep need for the beauty of a garden. It wasn’t just a backdrop—it was fuel. The natural world grounded them, offered rhythm and renewal, and gave them the energy to focus deeply on their craft.
Their garden visions echoed my own when Larry and I left our narrow semi-detached home in downtown Toronto in 2007, heading toward a rural life in Bear River. Like those writers, I longed for a quieter life, rooted in nature—one where creativity could grow alongside the tomatoes and flowers.
Our First Garden Oasis
Back then our Toronto garden was small, about the size of a modest room, tucked in the backyard and ringed with tall, gangly trees that cast shifting shadows on everything below—especially on the few brave vegetables I attempted to grow. Still, it was our precious little oasis. Private, lush, and alive. In the warm months, it became an outdoor room where we ate most of our evening meals. I painted out there too.
The Reality of Garden Work
But back to the book. What struck me most was that like us, some of these writers hadn’t anticipated the work involved in homestead farming—or even maintaining a small home garden. Some said that gardening pulled them away from their writing.
Reading that made me smile and feel so much better about my own efforts. I often feel that same tug-of-war between my garden, my studio, and daily life with the endless rhythm of meal prep. And yet, I enjoy my garden time as much as painting. Theoretically, I now have the time to develop my ideas for painting, writing, and gardening—but I don’t have the same stamina I had at 47. I confess that at 74, I still haven’t quite mastered how to schedule my time effectively.
Still Creating, Still Growing
But I keep trying. I enjoy everything I work on whether it’s with a brush or a shovel, and that’s a very good thing.
But it feels even better to read that I’m in good company. Many creatives—past and present—have wrestled with the same balancing act. It’s oddly comforting to know that the struggle to manage time and energy and tasks is part of the human condition.
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A Helpful Habit
One thing that has truly helped me maintain my strength and stamina for this life is attending yoga two mornings a week here in Bear River. But more on that in another post.
I don’t want to jinx it, but I’m thrilled with the paintings I’ve been working on these past few weeks.
Thrilled—because all winter, my desire to paint had vanished. I stopped seeing the world through a painter’s eyes. Artists, photographers, creators are observers, endlessly noticing color, shapes, shadows, and hidden vignettes in the ordinary. I love seeing the world that way.
But last winter, that lens went dark. Scenes that once begged to be painted left me numb. It was unsettling, like losing a sense. On top of that, shingles and COVID drained my energy, locking me further away from my easel.
Yet creativity is stubborn. It lingers in the subconscious, waiting. Like muscle memory, it can flicker back to life with patience and practice. And now, here I am: grateful for time to nurture my garden into a living palette, to lose myself in brushstrokes again.
My only other commitment? Muddy Duck Yoga twice a week—a wonderful ritual that fuels both my body and my art.
After months of drought, I’m finding my rhythm again. And it feels fantastic.
It started with surrender. Letting go of expectations and feeing lupin joy again.
It’s been about a year since I last posted, and over that time, three significant shifts have reshaped my creative life.
Last fall, after ten fulfilling years in a co-op gallery I helped to found in Bear River, we made the difficult decision to close its doors. Letting go of Bear River Artworks Gallery was bittersweet — a goodbye to a community space, shared energy, and the experience of seeing my work alongside others’. But it also opened up personal room for quiet, for personal expansion, and for a different kind of creative exploration.
Then came winter, and with it, an unexpected stretch of illness — first shingles, then Covid. Both forced me to slow down, to listen more closely to my body, and to let go of any expectations, schedules or illusions of control. I watched the shifting winter light across my bedroom wall, and slowly an idea unfurled. I needed to realign my creativity, to expand it. I needed to rethink my studio activities and space.
I spent weeks in my head, rearranging my studio. What began as a practical response to shifting circumstances became something more meaningful — a quiet recognition that I am not the same artist I was a year ago. Part of my recovery was to sit in the studio and visualize a new layout and organization. The space I’ve created now feels like a reflection of that: a place to write, to experiment, and to allow the next phase of my work to emerge. I’ll tell you more about this in my next post.
I share this here because I know many of you, too, are living through seasons of change — creative, personal, or otherwise. I’m reminded that creativity doesn’t just live in the big, finished pieces we show the world, but also in the quiet ways we adapt, heal, and prepare the ground for what’s next.
Thank you for being here, reading along. I’d love to hear how this past year has shaped your own creative life. What have you had to let go of? What have you rearranged — inside or out — to make space for what’s coming next?
Bear River Artworks season opening on Saturday, June 1, 2024 marks the tenth year since a group of local artists opened a cooperative gallery in Bear River, Nova Scotia.
I attended the very first meeting back in 2015 and joined without hesitation. I was eager to find a venue for my paintings and to help develop a member-directed community project. I also wanted to meet the wonderful people who bought my paintings and who created their own bonds with a piece of my art.
New Paintings
But even after ten wonderful years, I still worry at the beginning of May that I won’t have finished enough paintings in the autumn and winter to hang. But, surprise, every year when it comes time to varnish and name the babies, I find that I even have a few extra!
This year’s crop of paintings is almost entirely flowers.
The one exception a the huge double painting of sumach trees.
It is a thrill to paint live flowers, but I am severely limited in the winter to forced tulips, forced forsythia branches from our enormous bush and potted geraniums. All of these made their way into some of these new paintings.
The remaining paintings were developed from a group of floral paintings that had been neglected until this winter and spring when I finally finished them.
Every artist has her own unique approach to painting. Bringing my easel inside from the centre of a living, moving garden and surroundings is a difficult transition at first. Painting from memory, from sketches and from my photos is a completely different way to work.
I must shift my concentration away from the living world and the outside elements to a static one. So, I use the opportunity to focus on learning more about the mediums (oils vs. acrylics vs. sketching) and color theory.
When I’m not able to get inspiration from Nature, I look for it in the work of other artists. I revisit and add to my collections of artists’ paintings on Pinterest. In this way I ‘discover’ so many new living artists along with new-to-me works from long-gone artists. I learn a lot about what I like in a painting and am able to step back and to take a critical view of my unfinished paintings that got ‘stuck’ and, hopefully, inject life into them.
The greatest way to learn is by doing, and there is a lot to learn. I am very fortunate to be able to paint in this beautiful corner of the world. And I’m grateful to be a part of a group gallery with supportive colleagues. It is truly wonderful to be part of a small gallery where I can exhibit my paintings to people who are interested in what I do and to those who have helped me pursue my passion by buying my artwork.
Bear River Artworks Gallery is open in June from Thursday to Sunday, 10-4pm. We plan to extend the week by 1 day for July, August and September. Hours will be posted on our social media.
All the artists take turns managing the gallery and while there is a schedule, there is no set day that I work. I will be there June 1, 7, 15, 21, and 30th from 10am until 4pm. If you would like to visit me in the Gallery or in my home studio, please contact me.
The other artists are jewellers Larry Knox and Laurel Strachan, painter Crystal Pyne and photographer Gary Fraser. They would love to meet you too!
Gary FraserLarry KnoxLarry KnoxCrystal PyneCrystal PyneGary FraserFlora DoehlerLaurel Strachan
Standing outdoors in autumn at the edge of a tangled sumac grove is a reminder that some things remain constant even as the world around us transforms. Birds fly overhead, branches sigh in the wind. Falling leaves add their fragrance to the damp earth. These earth and sky sensory gifts are all abundant in Bear River.
I feel a magical otherworldliness in places of unmanaged overgrowth. They return me to childhood fairy tales filled with mysterious forests and magical beings. Anything and everything can and will happen.
The Enchanted Sumac Grove
Our little sumac grove is one of my favourite painting locations.
Sumac trees have an unmatched fall presence with their red leaves, dark twisted limbs, and the sweep of their branches. But their crimson leaves are brief. They drop to the ground with the first hard autumn rainfall.
Much of my painting is inspired by the rush of joy I feel when an object or a colour moves me in a scene. I can’t anticipate it and it comes unbidden. The impulse is so strong that I follow it when I can and before it disappears. The experience of painting outdoors lifts my spirit. Indeed, the entire act of painting is my medicine.
My setup. The canvasses are protected from wind gusts by 2 cinder blocks.
Setting up My Outside Studio
These sumac trees are in an out-of-the-way spot end of the house where I don’t usually walk. Half the leaves had already turned from green to red when I noticed them. The arching trees and wild growth in this chaotic, private setting just added to the drama.
I rushed to the studio and dragged my heavy wooden, Italian double easel out to the spot. I felt I needed a huge canvas to capture the expansive beauty of the scene. The wheelbarrow transported my easel, brushes, water, charcoal, paint, rags.
There was a problem with a 4 feet x 6 feet canvas. Size matters but can be a problem. In the past I have depended on the help of friends with trucks to transport large paintings from our house to a gallery, because my car can’t handle anything wider than 40”. My work-around was to tie 2 canvases, each 3 feet x 4 feet together at the back. I also wheelbarrowed concrete bricks to anchor the easel so that the wind wouldn’t turn my canvases into sails!
There is an additional excitement in battling the elements this way. It definitely combines physical exercise with problem-solving.
Painting from the Heart
Once the palette and canvas was set up, the hard part begins. How could I translate my feelings of excitement and joy about the scene onto a blank canvas?
I loosely sketched the large shapes onto the canvases with quick charcoal marks. I wanted to capture the shape and the movement of the grove of sumac as a mass but also to show a few individual trees.
Working out the layout with charcoal.
The beginning of the painting took place over a series of chilly, blustery days. It is never my goal to reproduce exactly what I see. Instead, I want to suggest a feeling, movement and to follow the curve of the landscape and then to edit what I am seeing. Eventually the painting takes precedence over the actual scene and leads the way. I become present in the environment and feel like I could step through the canvas into another world. Everything melts away except an awareness of colour, paint, trees, wind and sky.
A couple of days later, a wind and rain storm blew in and overnight the red leaves lay shrivelled on the ground in spirals of deep maroon. That was the fall of 2021.
Drying leaves are ready to blow away.
Refining the Painting Inside the Warm Studio
I stored the canvasses until the sumac leaves turned red again. The painting waited. I missed the window in 2022. This past fall in 2023, I returned to the scene.
This time when the leaves fell, I continued to paint it in the studio. The shapes and colours of the painting needed refining. At this point it’s not as much about feeling and intuition as about tweaking colour and adjusting the overall design and composition. I rarely paint from photos because I love being IN the nature. Having something real, three dimensional and living inspires me. But now I needed to closely examine those signature twisted trunks of the sumac.
When I looked at the panels separately, I saw that the left panel had more interest. The right hand panel needed a variety of elements so that it could also work as a strong stand-alone painting like the other panel. It needed contrast; a focal point; defined large and small areas and a variety of marks and brushstrokes.
The Enchanted Sumac Grove – left panel of diptych The Enchanted Sumac Grove – right panel of diptych
Painting is a call and response process and each additional stroke of colour affects what’s already there and influences what is still to come. It’s a constant dance with the brush and the colours. I put down some marks, I step back and look, I walk over to pick up some colour on my brush from the palette, apply it and then step back again and assess. Painting is a journey of a thousand marks and the end for me is always unknown until it’s done.
The Painting’s Debut in Bear River
I was very excited to debut this painting during February at Sissiboo Coffee Bar and Gallery in Bear River and now at Sissiboo Coffee in Annapolis Royal until mid April. The day after we hung the show, I sipped a divine cup of coffee and sat and stared at the painting and thought about all the steps it took to bring it to completion. Because it’s a diptych, I designed it so that it can be hung as one large painting or hung as 2 separate ones, depending on wall space.
The other 2 artists in the show at Sissiboo Coffee are Crystal Pyne (painter) and Gary Fraser (Photographer). We all depict Nature in this show. We are artists at Bear River Artworks Gallery during the Summer months. We love this opportunity to show our works during the off-season at our favorite coffee shops run by friends who are community minded.
The exhibition continues at Sissiboo Coffee in Annapolis Royal until April 14, 2024. Open daily until 4pm.
Something fairly profound happened for me this month.
I have felt quite sluggish this winter. Not actually depressed but just completely unmotivated, disinterested, lazy and believing that my strong desire to paint had completely abandoned me. This was quite distressing because there was absolutely no substitute interesting endeavour that came to mind. Nothing. Not writing. Not gardening. Not visiting. Not travelling. I wondered if this is how the end begins.
The first months of the pandemic in 2020 activated a lot of distress and anxiety for me. It was hard to imagine that there had ever been calm and happiness in my world. Therefore, memories of those good periods took on a deeper significance. I reached back to memories of early times in my life when I felt happy and content. Like the times spent visiting my Scottish grandmother and her wild garden of flowers and vegetables and experiencing with her love and kindness. But that garden. What was it about that garden that brought me such joy?
It still seems strange that all the beautiful colours of spring, summer and fall are gone. I miss the vibrant reds, the brilliant purples and the intense greens of flowers and fields, not to mention the quality of the light. Continue reading →
The year is almost a wrap. Last weekend’s Holiday Art and Craft show in Bear River was lovely, busy and a wonderful way to reconnect with many new and old friends, some who are art makers and others who are collectors. I was glad to bring home a few treasures for myself. Continue reading →
This new painting is special to me for several reasons. For starters, I really like it! I always enjoy the process of painting and trying to solve the design problem, but sometimes the end result falls short of what I am trying to achieve. Ironically I believe this is a motivating factor to paint and to try it again. But this time I am happy with the look and feel of this painting; the spontaneity and lightness. Continue reading →
“Every war already carries within it the war which will answer it. Every war is answered by a new war, until everything, everything is smashed… That is why I am so wholeheartedly for a radical end to this madness, and why my only hope is in a world socialism… Pacifism is not a matter of calmly looking on; it is work, hard work.” – Kåthe Kollwitz, 1943.Continue reading →
The process of learning to make art is like that of learning to speak. You learn the language, the grammar, the idioms. But what you say with it is totally up to you. – Jane Davies in Abstract Painting: the elements of visual language.
I am inspired by a recent painting workshop with abstract painter Leya Evelyn, and I want to tell you about it with this video to give you a peek at my new painting series. Continue reading →
Last week I painted every day.
Previous to that, It’d been 3 months since I’d blogged or spent any significant time in the studio. I just didn’t feel like it anymore. But why? Continue reading →
