windscapes

kite festival in Swift Current, Saskatchewan

How do you find a kite festival on the prairie? Look ahead, look up.










in the wind sculpture garden:




in the town of Swift Current:







on the bluffs above the river valley:

going places

Another portrait, more drawing than painting, really.
Not sure if I like it, also the rectangular format is less appealing than square. Perhaps it will grow on me.

No title
oil and china marker on canvas
18w x 14h




In progress work for the November show



This one's coming along too - starting to look a bit messy at this point, which is good!

time and place

The stretchers finally arrived this week!
Stretching 21 canvases, even such small ones as these, is quite a job.

The're so beautiful, all neatly laid out on my table and full of possibility.


And so it begins.

the beat goes on

Urban Spaces series 2, #4
(alley in downtown Calgary)
acrylic on stitched canvas
31w x 33h


Urban Spaces series 2, #3
(Chinatown, Toronto)
acrylic on stitched canvas
31w x 32h


All together now!

Sometimes I like these and sometimes I don't - they keep me guessing. Some sort of evolution is underway.

interpretations

Here again are the paintings I made on Wednesday, with reference photos:


Canmore trailers with misty mountains




Birch trees and mountain





Atmospheric evergreens





Wolf willow, spruce, pine, birch trees

plein air

Tuesday evening I wrote the final test for my accounting class. Wasn't as easy as the mid-term because I hadn't studied as dilligently! But I think it went ok.

A friend and I had made plans to go painting in Canmore on Wednesday...



Undeterred by the weather, our intrepid heroes make a shelter out of tarps and found materials, and begin painting.



Mel is interested in the quirkiness of the trailer park juxtaposed against the mountains, and boldly begins a large work.



This woman has staying power: after 6 hours it is nearly finished.



Verna cannot stay in one place for too long, and after making an initial painting under the rigged tarps she moves along, inventing temporary shelters as her shifting locations demand.



Occasionally the rain lets up, the sun almost shines, and there is no need for umbrellas.



Almost 8 hours from the time they arrived, our tenaciously good-humoured artists are still smiling.





My four small canvases, from left to right in the order they were made:





And the box I devised for transporting wet paintings in the car:

more urban spaces

A nice shift, doing photo-based work again!
These are not finished yet, but getting close - I hope to have them done this week.

30w x 31h


30w x 33h



my pots and jars

you see I want a lot

You see, I want a lot - perhaps I want everything
The darkness that comes with every infinite fall
and the shivering blaze of every step up.

So many live on and want nothing
and are raised to the rank of prince
by the slippery ease of their light judgements.

But what you love to see are faces that do work and feel thirst.
You love most of all those who need you
as they need a crowbar or a hoe.

You have not grown old, and it is not too late to dive into
your increasing depths, where life calmly gives out its own secret.


Rainer Maria Rilke
translated by Robert Bly

back to the drawing board

The drawing board being, in this case, photo-referenced paintings.

before:


after:

Not yet finished but starting to look all right at this point.



When I visited the Front Gallery in Edmonton in early May, I met one of the gallery artists - Tom Gale - and he gave me a box of canvas scraps.

This piece was in that box. Isn't it lovely? Looks like coffee cup rings among the paint splatters! A residue of Tom's working history. Of course I must photograph it for the record? :)


Here it is stitched into a new canvas. The pity is that I'll be gessoing over those stains... but the history will still be there, imbedded, an invisible part of the finished work.


And here's the photo it's based on.

Another day indeed. The book is not quite as poetic as I had thought it would be, but well-written so far, and I think the scope will widen as the narrative progresses.

The Excavators

oil on stitched canvas
41w x 43h

Sometimes my imagination is bigger than my body, and I forget to remember to just be myself.

Just took out a library book: "Lost" by Cathy Ostlere.
Simply put, it's about a woman's brother who goes missing while at sea. He is eventually presumed dead, and the book is her reaction to her brother's life. Or so I gather, having only just begun reading.

The inside of the jacket says
"Lost is a (...) meditation on the idea that to be lost can be a fact or a state of mind. And sometimes the difference isn't clear."

Lately I have been feeling a bit lost. I put this book on hold a couple of months ago and it has just become available... good timing, perhaps.

And tomorrow is another day.

"the third game is meaningless"

...said my husband at the pub last night. And I thought: that's kind of an interesting sentence when taken out of context.



in a flash of sun between rains



And so begins another photo-based painting. This one's 31w x 33h.



Storm
yep, I began painting it, got some half-formed ideas for this one.

let it be

Initially I had planned to have all new acrylic works for my November show at the Front Gallery in Edmonton, but I'm realizing that I have a lot on my plate right now, and could make things easier on myself by finishing some of the 20+ oil paintings that I put away in January.

So today I pulled out some of those unresolved oil paintings and worked on them.
Ahhh, oil paint. So nice.

A quickly collaged image of the work which I feel is ready for the show - can you tell which are acrylic and which are oil?


This is the one that's mostly hidden, lying on the table in the first photo.


This is the one that's really hacked up in the foreground of the first photo.


And lastly a couple of shots of yours truly: