Summer Grin
This is a new ACEO I did today. Even in this heat I managed to get a little bit of work done.
I love this cheeky grin. This summer, I feel like I have watched baby Scarlett turn into little girl Scarlett.
The Pear Tree
We have the most amazing pear tree growing in our back yard. I get real pleasure looking at this tree that we planted, only three years ago, in a yard that had nothing (and I mean NOTHING) in it. Not only has this tree tripled in size but it has fruit for the first time! This in EDMONTON! Truly amazing. This painting pays homage to our pear tree. The fruit hasn’t really made it to this size but one can dream.
Winter Birch
I did this original mixed media ACEO on 100% rag today. I just love this vintage coat. It reminds me of a movie I saw set during world war ll. The boy in the movie was running through a forest of birch trees, there was snow on the ground and of course, the movie was black and white. Don’t ask me where all that came from. The picture looks nothing like it but it must have been the feeling it evoked in me. Anyway, I did a large version of this one a little while back and have wanted to paint it again ever since.
Every Girl Needs A Big Hat
This is Scarlett looking less like a baby and more like a girl with attitude!
This is an original mixed media ACEO on 100% rag paper.
The Water Lilies Keep Me Cool
The water lilies keep me cool
They bob around my floating head
My hair mimicking pond weeds
I feel the little fish bump up against my legs
A dragonfly lands on me
Perhaps he thinks that I am a log or even a flower
I am so still
Maybe he is kissing me
So very gently
As I lay here
Drifting
Victoria Rain
This is an original 2.5″x3.5″ mixed media piece on 100% rag paper.
I guess Victoria was on my mind today. I miss it, what can I say …
rain and all.
The Orange Peeler 2
This is an original mixed media piece on 100% rag paper.
I had this little painting taped down for ages. I needed the the drawing board so I decided to finish it and I am glad I did. Poor little neglected painting.
This painting is of Scarlett peeling oranges. I have done several versions of this subject and am working on a large canvas of 5 Scarletts peeling oranges in a row. I call it The Orange Peelers or The Orange Peeler Factory. It all started when I discovered that by giving Scarlett a bowl of tiny oranges to peel I could buy myself at least 20 – 30 minutes of free time. This was an event to remember and to even document! HA!
Watching The High Wire Act
Poor Circus Girl. Watching the high wire act still makes her nervous.
Another Circus Girl study. This is a 2.5″x3.5″ mixed media painting on 100% rag paper.
Girl With Fox
This is a 11.5″ x15.5″ mixed media painting done on 100% rag paper.
This painting kind of strays a little from what I usually paint or at least the way I paint. I used a historical photograph I found on the web as inspiration. I usually take all my own reference photographs, but I just found this photograph so intriguing. Who is this girl holding a fox? It just looks like something from an old fairy tale. I had it pinned on my wall for the longest time and just had to paint it.
Another Still Moment
I did this ACEO today of Scarlett. It is another study of a moment when my two year old was unusually still and contemplative. A moment to celebrate.
PRETEND- Illustration Friday -Looking For Fairies Amongst The Flowers
I was looking for fairies in the Garden
I left a little cottage teapot for them
So that they could set up house
Perhaps they would prefer to sleep within the flowers
If I were a fairy I’d live amongst the poppies
Their big papery petals would be my walls
and close by I would have lupins and foxgloves and hollyhocks too
Their lovely fragrance would surround me as I
drift
off
to
sleep
Horizontally Challenged
Not only am I not a landscape artist, I will take it one step further and say that I am not even a horizontal artist! I have painted quite a few paintings over the last six months and I have only completed one horizontal piece. (The above painting of Lilies). The other horizontal painting I started never got finished. This is rare for me. If I start a painting, I usually finish it, but not this one. This one was NOT good and was going to remain that way. So I ditched it.
None of this matters really but yesterday I was just wondering why I like vertical so much. I was looking at a new painting that I was working on and it struck me: VERTICAL! AGAIN! WHY?
I guess the answer is fairly obvious. I am a figurative painter (mostly) and we humans are vertical by nature. So it does make sense. Let’s just say, I am horizontally challeged. Hey, come to think of it, having two little kids makes me horizontally challenged in more ways than the way I turn my canvas! HA!
In The Wings
Yesterday was Imogen’s novice ballet recital. She did a great job. Some of the older girls were so beautiful dancing their solos. I got all weepy about it all and then right in the middle of the show, everything was stopped and a teacher came out carrying a sobbing little girl. Her parents were called and when she saw her Daddy approach the stage her little body shook and she sobbed even harder with relief. That was just too much for me. Tears were streaming down my face. It would have been very embarrassing if it hadn’t been so dark in the theatre.
This multi media piece is called “Waiting”. I did it a little while ago. This is what I wrote about it at the time:
How much time does a dancer wait in the wings? Certainly more time than actually dancing. I am sure it is true of a lot of things but I am so intrigued by the world of dancing right now that I couldn’t help but paint this.
I Talked To A Crow Today
I talked to a crow today,
or rather, he talked to me.
I’m not sure what he was going on about
but he did go on and on and on.
I talked to a crow today,
he had an awful lot to say.
“Mr. Crow,” I said politely, ” will you please let me get a word in?”
But he wasn’t even listening.
He went on and on and on.
That is the way it is with crows,
and sometimes with people too.
Not really interested in conversing,
but rather in the sound of their own voice.
I listened to a crow today,
he went on and on and on.
Nanny Makes It All Better
I did this mixed media ACEO today. It is of my daughter Imogen having dirt brushed away from her face. I just love this image. It really illustrates the love between a child and a caring adult. We don’t get to see Nanny as often as we would like but when we do, she really can make it all better. ( That goes for me too!)
Art Right Now
Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.
Pablo Picasso
When I was a little girl I would do art any chance I could get. I loved to be creative and was always encouraged by my Mum. It was fun. I enjoyed doing it. In fact, there was nothing I liked better. It was never a chore! It was never dull.
So, what happened? When I was a teenager I romanticised about a lot of things: Marriage, children, getting older.Visions of Picasso danced in my head. Like Picasso before me, I saw my future self eating dinner and then taking my fish bones and making a clay relief. I would have a bohemian house with piles of art and reference books on the dining room table. I would paint along side of my toddler. Look at us painting together for hours at a time. I won’t go as far as to say I imagined myself wearing a striped black and white t- shirt and shorts but I will say that I was totally out of touch with reality. First of all, toddlers require constant help when they do art, and their attention span is all of oh, lets say, 15 minutes. If you are lucky. Also, I can’t stand stuff all over the place, let alone my dining room table. I need that table to feed my kids and I don’t want their grubby little fingers all over my good books! Not to mention that I don’t even like fish very much, let alone a whole fish with bones.
I guess as I got older so much stuff got in the way of the pure process of creation. I had a constant dialogue going through my brain. Is it good enough? Who will like this? Is it too commercial or illustrative? or not enough? Is the palette to cold? Too dark? Too muddy? How could I tap into the pureness of what I was doing if the whole time I was doing it my head was questioning whether I should be doing it all. I don’t know who initially put these questions in my head. College, University, people of influence all played a part. Life isn’t the way I imagined it. The fun in art definitely was no longer part of my process. I no longer felt excited to create. It was just so much pressure: to create art that everybody likes is really hard.
Now, it has come full circle and as a Mother I watch my girls create and I am inspired by them. They don’t worry about the outcome. They just enjoy the act of making something. Anything. When it is done, it is done, and they move on to the next thing. They don’t dwell on it. It is about the process not the product. Sure we all want to create art that we like, and that other people like too, but if that is all we focus on it becomes a chore and where is the fun in that? It is so nice not to be in that angst ridden part of my life. At forty, it is so great to be able to reassociate art with fun, and know I can still learn new stuff even if it is stuff I knew at the age of three.
Striped Jacket
New Painting of this great striped jacket inspired by Ralph Lauren. I wouldn’t be able to wear it and sit on my living room chair, I’d blend right in! Of course I had to add a yellow belt. I am really into the yellow accessories at the moment!
Argyle Socks
Just finished this painting yesterday. For some reason the image of girl wearing brightly coloured argyle socks popped into my head before I went to sleep the other night. Don’t ask me why but here it is.
