New Paintings in Bear River Artworks Gallery – opening reception June 1, 1-4pm, 2024. Year 10!

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.

The Enchanted Sumac Grove
©Flora Doehler, 2023
48″x72″
Acrylic on 2 Canvas panels

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!

Other worlds in a Sumac Grove

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.

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 exhibition continues at Sissiboo Coffee in Annapolis Royal until April 14, 2024. Open daily until 4pm.

The Enchanted Sumac Grove ©Flora Doehler, 2023 48″x72″ Acrylic on 2 Canvas panels $3,800
The Enchanted Sumac Grove – right panel of diptych ©Flora Doehler, 2023 48″x72″
The Enchanted Sumac Grove – left panel of diptych ©Flora Doehler, 2023 48″x72″ Acrylic on 2 Canvas panels $3,800
My Yoga teacher, Wendy Goudie aka Muddy Duck Yoga and her mama Nancy express their approval of the painting at Sissiboo Coffee Roaster, Annapolis Royal.

The Overdue Update

Hi. Remember me? I’m that painter in Bear River, Nova Scotia whose paintings and posts resonated with you. I didn’t mean to let 6 months slip by between posts, but here we are.

Truthfully, this year has been a challenging time at our house involving healthcare and procedures and worry about the unknown. However, in this moment and today the future looks bright and I hope this continues.

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The Healing Properties of Daffodils, Turtles and Goutweed

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.

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My Grandmother’s Garden Planted Seeds of Love

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?

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Inventing a Blue Flower While Breathing

If you love flowers, you’ll know that actual blue flowers are rare. Horticulturalists try to develop true blue blooms, and sometimes they come up with a purple and call it blue. And even though some flowers are blue, like a Cornflower, a Delphinium or a Forget-me-not, you can’t find a blue Zinnia or Daisy.

Except if you are a painter, and you can imagine it. You can paint the flowers any colour you want to.

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Untangle the Slinky and Keep Making Art

After quite a hectic summer and fall in our co-op Bear River Artworks Gallery, I welcome this time to binge a little on Netflix, discover exciting artists on Instagram and to listen to podcasts from all over the world covering topics as diverse as how-to-be-an-artist-in europe, international politics, meditation, and story-telling. Add a few mini workshops on art to the list, some studio planning, video making, instagram optimization… along with website editing and potato chip eating and a bit of treadmill time and that kind of sums up my days.

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