Many months ago Kathy over at Lake Superior Spirit blog suggested the idea of a blessing post each week until the end of the year. I liked the idea. I accepted the challenge. This now is my second to last Monday morning blessing post for 2013. It has been a good practice as my blog writing had become very sporadic. The topic also offered a way to focus and organize my thoughts as an artist and as a sole-entrepreneur who regularly shares work-in-progress and other experiences that underpins my creative process. Thank you Kathy 🙂
That said, I have no idea what I should share or leave out this morning as a tree frog croaks in the woods outside the studio and the sun reaches over the hill in its winter golden light. I am reminded of a quick study that isn’t released yet from a few weeks ago from a similar morning.
MORNING GREETS FIR TREE 10 x 8 inch oil on canvas
The paint easily dances with the sunlight of the branches and I know the blessing of nature and my own breath intimately.
Then there is travel and a recent trip to Vancouver British Columbia and time with family. There is me standing on the back edge of an old bathtub and leaning far out the second story window to flip it wide enough to get a clear shot of the city.
VANCOUVER DECEMBER TWILIGHT
Is this nature too, I ask? I suppose, if an anthill or a beaver dam is nature then maybe this is as well. The evening light certainly doesn’t mind treating it as such.
On the way back home, I am drawn to the beach in the Saanich Peninsula on Vancouver Island. I had gone to Victoria to pick up more oil paints and to get a few Golden heavy acrylic paints to see if they would work for our trip to Europe in the spring. What do you think? Will the do?
DECEMBER SEA VANCOUVER ISLAND STUDY 8 x 10 acrylic on canvas board
The trick I believe with a medium is to go with its strength while knowing its limitation – much like anything else in life. These paints and I will be learning their strengths and limitations over the weeks ahead. Imagine the what a blessing early 1900 painters would have thought it was to have more than one kind of paints in tubes to squeeze out and set to work with no collecting of pigment and mixing of paints? We live in luxurious times here on the west coast of Canada, almost embarrassingly so. I resist the guilt of such a blessed and easy existence. I know that it can change, will likely change. My first job is to use my time purposefully and wisely, today.
THE BIG FIR TREE IN SNOW
Best Wishes, happy holidays and Merry Christmas!
What blessings do find the most difficult to recognize?
Last evening I was wondering what I might possibly have to say this morning. But ten – yes ten full hours of sleep has created a bubbling pot of thoughts and ideas. So much for yesterday’s slug appearance
I did spend an hour on Facetime with the “O” boys which likely did some good as well. Yes, I spent part of that time making faces as well. When you are one and almost three years old, making faces is a lot of fun.
So what is it that I have cooking you might ask? Well, I have an idea for a solo exhibition in the spring for one. It is tentatively called “Mostly Off The Wall” and that is all I can share at the moment. I think it shall be a LOT of fun though – maybe even one you would like to travel all the way to Mayne Island to see. March or early April are the tentative dates. This will be just before our planned two to three-month trip to Europe where I shall paint my way in leisurely around a very few selected locations. These are the plans if all goes well that is. But a person has to put a mark in the sand if anything is ever going to move from a dream to reality. These are my marks on the horizon of 2014.
There are also two new photographs from our resent close-to-home vacation time in and near Victoria, British Columbia. These were taken in East Sooke Park and you may appreciate the difference of the stone compared to that which is mostly found on Mayne Island. Getting very close to facing the open seas on the southwest coast Vancouver Island this harder stone is much more prevalent.
CREYKE POINT: Braced against the Pacific’s unrelenting chastising, proud and strong they resist. The hard stones may have their misgivings but their closeness to the sea is not one of them.
November and December and even sometimes the first two weeks of January are my quiet time of year in my art studio. Part of this is that after the Open Studio event I kind of turn off my marketing and sales efforts. Yes there is still the new 2014 Calendar available (click on the image to check it out further)
and new photographs and paintings continue to be released. But it is more a time of enjoying friends and family. It is a time of gathering and having a good visit. I love this time of year. These are Monday morning blessing in the largest grandest sense.
It is also a time of year when I reflect on what has worked and not worked and plan for the year ahead. These include my donations of both work and money because this is how the energy of receiving and giving is revitalized – at least for me. This weekend I received two requests I am happy to consider. One is for a commissioned work for auction to a wood recycling association and the other is for a donation to a private school fundraising auction. These are the touch-stones of balance in a material world that has gone somewhat mad in its need for acquisition of property – original art included. As much as I live a life of simple abundance, just by the sheer reality of being a painter and photographer, I create stuff that is purchased and contributes to this global material addition plaguing the current human condition. My only defense seems to be to ensure that the work is expensive enough that it will be well-cared-for once purchased. Odd isn’t it? But it is the only a few strategies I have come up with so far. Another is to donate my time, work and sometimes cash to others that are seeking and need support. Sometimes, I find this tension between materialism and simple abundance excruciating, particularly if there is a run of sales on my paintings where they are selling as fast as I can paint them. I think – oh know! Now what!? So, these quieter times in November and December of sales and my ongoing practice of giving provide a balance and resilience to this inner panic. These are my acknowledgements when considering my blessings this Monday morning.
There is also a new smaller painting that I did last week while the studio assistant was painting edges and putting work into the inventory program. I am waiting for it to dry in order to get a proper photograph but here is a sneak-peek and I will let you know when it is released over at Terrill Welch Artist (where there is currently a new post about another painting I released last week).
ARBUTUS BY THE TRAIL 8 x 10 inch oil on canvas
The Art of Terrill Welch facebook Page continues to grow and is now has over 200 “likes” as you can see there on your right. The Art Review comments by writers that are posted every Wednesday seems to be going well. This week is a review of the painting EARLY NOVEMBER SEA by Sandi White. I know she would be most delighted if you had a moment to drop in and leave a few words.
As you can see, though the surface of my studio life seems quiet and it feels this way to me as well, there is an undercurrent of activity that somehow is happening with little energy or attention on my part. I am in a time of dormancy and rest but the roots of my work are still being well nourished. Thank you universe for these ongoing blessing during a time in the world that seems to be in warp-speed chaos.
I tell you, sometimes blessings require running shoes and a sweater as one tries to keep up and keep warm to their cool wisps as they streak across the surface of our everyday life. This week shall be met with abandon and somewhat reckless pleasure between the art studio and grandmother duties. Without a doubt, it will be a “yeeeeehaaaaawwww!” kind of week with Thursday being filled with crazy creatures wandering in the night asking for treats.
Of course, the light and shadows will still move unruffled by my daily activities. This 12 x 16 inch oil on canvas landscape which appeared in the studio under my brushes over the weekend reminds me of this.
ARBUTUS ON MT. PARKE
The painting will likely be released sometime next week when I get a moment to put it up. But it is done and I am happy with it as it makes a wonderful grounding reference point for the week ahead. Many Monday blessing to you!
What will be your grounding reference point this week?
P.S. I am keeping a secret that I am just barely able to keep from telling you! Stay tuned because soon we are in for a real treat and addition to sharing my paintings and photographs.
Until the end of December, my Monday morning posts are about noticing blessings and things I am thankful for receiving. Due to my schedule this week, I am posting on Sunday instead.
What I am noticing is that I often take action when I am feeling blessed. For example, I am thankful for the local apples and pears we have been devouring over the last couple of weeks. So good! In fact, good enough to want to put a few in a new still life painting.
First, let’s set everything up and take a photograph or sixty just for fun. The painting will be from a different perspective but this gives us the idea…
Now for the beginning of the still life painting.
It is hard to see but the whole canvas has a light wash to tone down the white and then I just begin to find the shapes and colour relations not really worrying about the final result too much at all. Things will change and move around with time and light. The idea is just to get started somewhere.
Working wet-on-wet or alla prima I continue to build up the paint on this roughed in start. The minutes slip by and eventually the painting time can be counted in a few hours…
I must quit now. There is a meeting. There is super and then the full moon pushes against the fog and sleep arrives under the night sky. In the morning I push on. I set it to “rest” and have some breakfast. I make a few edits. The day passes into night and I make few more edits on the still-wet oil painting, until …
PITCHER APPLES PEARS on a 16 x 20 inch canvas
We now have a study of whites and how they are always leaning towards one colour or another. The tastes, smells and texture of this still life have slid onto the canvas. For this magic of creative process I am thankful.
Now to clean up the studio but before we do, one last shot…
Some of the pears and apples have been eaten. The brushes have been clean and the paint on the palette is drying but it is all still here.
May your Sunday be rejuvenating and bring a sense of awareness and comfort.
What blessings do your actions tell you that you are noticing?
Heavy rain soaked the island during the night but now shafts of sunlight push between the branches of the large fir trees outside my studio window. I continue my Monday morning blessings practices with a sense of awe and wonder.
There are the most essential and practical blessings of warm dry shelter with ample light, nutritious food, refrigeration, running potable cold and hot water, These are such luxuries of abundance we can take them for granted but I don’t. I notice. I notice almost everyday.
There are the blessings of a loving family and the company of friends. These too I notice. One of our young grandsons came to visit this weekend for the first time. He is already past his second birthday. We see him at his home several times a year but it was the first time he had been here to la casa de inspiracion. For this I am deeply thankful.
Then there are the blessings of creative abundance. Sunday was a grand and beautiful day on Mayne Island. Let us slip for a moment into yesterday and revisit one of these moments chasing the October sun by the sea.
The canvas with its red underpainting stood ready on the french box easel while I devoured and early lunch and tried to decide what to paint.
This preparation and decision-making time is crucial to my painting process. It is the time I consider my intention, my focus, composition and method. Once I have decided these things then I paint usually without thinking about them again because I am by then deeply immersed in the moment using all of my sensory presence to bring the work to life on the canvas. This is how I render a painting alive rather than worrying about it being perfect. In this case few images were captured of the painting process. The light was moving shadows on and off the canvas from the large trees on the bank behind me. I focus on the work at hand rather than documenting the process itself.
Eventually, I step back.
Then just as quickly, I move forward and continue working until the brushes come to rest as the painting becomes too saturated with wet paint to continue.
Today I shall engage my critical creative mind and see if there are areas I can strengthen to carry the painting any further to its place of completeness. I am not sure that there is but I shall leave it sitting where it can surprise me with a quick glance just to be sure.
There is also the blessing of my art work being appreciated by others enough that they want to give the work a good home.
THE MT. BAKER REACH 8 x 10 inch oil on canvas will be off to California this week.
Not all artists experience public appreciation for their work during their life time. I have been very fortunate in this aspect over the past few years with numerous art collectors in Canada, United States, Australia and several parts of Europe purchasing my paintings and photography. The power of this blessing cannot be underestimated. As paintings leave the studio it creates a driving need to continue to do my best work as often as I can manage. Thank you to so many who continue to support my work with hard-earned financial resources. I notice and I appreciate your patronage.
Now I must fess up. With the upcoming Open Studio event now scheduled for November 9th and 10th from 11:00 am to 3:00 pm, I must delay the work on my new art book until early in the new year. Besides, the book has demanded a far larger scope than I had originally intended. The darn thing has taken on a life of its own! Image that!?
Who or what are you most thankful to have in your life on this fine Monday morning with its blessings?
There is something about autumn by the sea with the gray melancholy wrapped in fall colours. This particular day is one of those slow-baked, melancholy west coast Sundays, so moist and tender you can slice it with a tear.
This is the first of four huge canvases I have completed over the past several months. I started this painting last year about this time but it was not completed until February. However, I was not ready yet to let it go out into the world. I coveted closely, showing it here, on my blog and to close friends, family and art collectors but it was not for sale. Today though, I am ready and I am releasing this painting to a good independently wealthy or willing-to-take-out-a-mortgage home. This is one large painting! 🙂
Recently I had the good fortune to see an exhibition of Joseph Plaskett’s most recent paintings at the Winchester Gallery in Oak Bay, Victoria B.C. The date on many of the paintings is clearly marked as 2011, a practice we do not often see on the front of a painting anymore. The wisdom is that it may impact its saleability if the painting has not sold for a few years. But in this case, my mouth dropped when I realized that the exhibition was celebrating Joseph Plaskett’s 95th birthday year. He was 93 years old when he painted many of the paintings in the exhibition and by my observation may be some of his best work in a long life of painting.
Here is a quote from the artist that is posted on the Winchester Gallery page:
“The work I have produced in a long life has always been in constant change. What I show this year at Winchester Galleries is, I like to think, only the beginning of another change which now becomes more obvious with each canvas, but will not reach the public exposure for a few more years. This present show was chosen months ago. The changes have become more drastic. There is, I like to think, a complexity and a daring to experiment with both colour and composition. Only one canvas goes back more than a few years. It is a large still life which I have been refusing to put on the market, wanting to keep it in my possession as long as I survive.  It is a brilliant example of an earlier and safer act of creation. But now I am producing work that is the beginning of something more complex and dangerous. I am taking risks, letting myself go.
I like to think I am not repeating myself. I am influenced by much of what I see in contemporary art. I will give one example. Two years ago I was excited by the huge exhibition of the work of Peter Doig which I saw in both the Tate in London and in Paris.  It made me proud to think of him as a “Canadian” painter, as, though born in Scotland, he spent much of his childhood and early youth in Canada.  I can only envy the originality of his work. My work is changing, but it is still a way of painting that is my own.”
The photograph of the work I am sharing here is from the BAU XI Gallery in Toronto website. The title of the painting is “Still Life with Apples (2)” 38 x 45 inch oil on canvas listing at $21,800.
Joseph Plaskett is considered to be one of Canada’s most talented and established painters. In the spring of 2001, he was awarded The Order of Canada for excellence in the field of visual art. Since the 1940’s, he has had over 65 solo and group exhibitions, with work in major public, private and corporate collections, including the National Gallery of Canada. He has exhibited with the Bau-Xi Gallery, both in Vancouver and Toronto, since 1973.
Born in 1918 in New Westminster, B.C., Plaskett studied art in Banff, San Francisco, New York, London and Paris. He has lived in Paris since 1951, and more recently in England. His chosen subjects have always been intimate expressions of everyday life – interiors, still life, and portraits of friends and models. There is a warm humanity to his work, a love of light and form and colour that is evident in every painting he produces. The works are composed with such superb quality of painting that the ensuing results are masterworks of visual delight.
reference: http://www.bau-xi.com/dynamic/artist.asp?ArtistID=24
(the several web pages of Joseph Plaskett’s paintings on this Gallery site are actually very easy to view)
May at least some of us still be painting some of our best work this late in a long life of painting. As an update, I did hear from the staff at the gallery that he is now no longer able to paint and is quite frail but still – what a painting adventure to still be painting quality work at 93 years old!
How might you want to be celebrating your 95th birthday year?
It is leaf kicking time! I am heading north for better than week to visit with family. With a bit of luck, I will come back with at least few photographs of brilliant autumn colours. I can’t make a promise but I can assure you that there is a good possibility.
In the meantime, I have been busy with a large stack of administrative work with little time to paint. But I do have a new large 60 x 36 inch oil on canvas resting called SEASIDE MAYNE ISLAND
It is not released yet and still needs a final photo shoot. I will also do a full work-in-progress post for us sometime in early October. Regardless of its newness and still “resting” status, I placed the painting in a prominent location last evening for a dinner we hosted with good friends and collectors of my paintings and photography.
The hit of the evening, after SEASIDE MAYNE ISLAND of course, was a new still life painting…
AUGUST STILL LIFE WITH CEZANNE AND MATISSE
36 x 24 inch oil on canvas
There are distinctive elements of Paul Cezanne‘s work that go far beyond his use of colour to represent form. He had a way of presenting different viewpoints in his compositions that was and is exciting. This is something that Henri Matisse continued to explore while allowing the paint to become colour fields of flat surfaces. At one point in the of the development of this work I had a choice. I could continue to build up the colour fields or I could continue to follow the light and movement within the landscape. Matisse of course was arguing for letting paint be paint in its colour and simplicity. Cezanne was slowly working his way into the tension of form and structure of the still life using colour as his guide. I observed. I thanked the masters. Then I picked up my brush and continued to paint the light and movement between the forms until the painting came to rest. Edges are currently unfinished and can be completed to meet your needs.
Where might be your favourite Leaf-kicking stroll when the golden light is shining low through the trees?
Psst! I have also started working on my second art book. The working title is ANYTHING BUT NEUTRAL: Mayne Island in paintings and photographs, Volume Two. I have about 57 of the estimated 80 pages completed in draft form. Tentative release will be early November. I shall keep you posted as it progresses 🙂
The first days of September have rumbled past Mayne Island in thunder, lighting, rain and sun. Unsettled weather I believe they call it. As many of you know, I usually focus on the sun and let the rest slide off like rivers of water on our tin roof and escapes along the bedrock to the valley floor. But today not so much. There is nothing specific that has cast a shadow on my optimism but rather a clutter of small bits, hanging at about head-height, making it hard for the light to get through.
As I mentioned today over on Kathy Drue’s Lake Superior Spirit blog post “the sun’s egg yolk eye in late summer” this is my favourite time of year. There isn’t much time to read though. Even so, I am working my way through I’m Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen by Sylvie Simons and several art books on the life and work of the American Abstract ExpressionistRichard Diebenkorn. This and having recently finished watching the T.V. series Mad Men on Netflix. Hence, I have spent much of the summer in the North American time of my childhood learning about events, art and music that was not really part of my rural experience at all. It seems most of this didn’t reach me until the late 70s.
Of course, I have painted as usual these past months. Late summer is the time when my love affair with still life painting comes into full blossom.
(GOLDEN PLUMS AN APPLE AND GREEN VASE – 12 x 16 inch oil on canvas released today HERE)
But the midday light is starting to become rich and warm again so I shall be back to my camera expeditions along the sea.
(Cattle Point with iPad is a photography sketch from Tuesday for future painting reference.)
This then is the beginning of the bitter, savory and sweet times of brilliant tangerine, lemon and rose flickering colours in front of the brooding and impending darkness of winter.
(SLICE WITH A TEAR 36 x 60 inch oil on canvas yet to be released but soon I promise)
(EVENING AND THE ARBUTUS TREE 36 x 60 inch oil on canvas available HERE)
So we could blame this darkness of spirit on Leonard Cohen for light is only as visible as the shadows allow. Therefore, in order to live in the light one must know the shadows.
(RHYTHM OF THE SEA EDITH POINT 20 x 40 inch oil on canvas will also be released soon)
Who better to guide such a journey than Leonard Cohen. Undeniably, Cohen offers a well-worn path into the grey and the bleak. But that is not it – not really.
Could it be the daily browsing and musing over the paintings of Richard Diebenkorn who, even with his brighter moments, leaves me with a mysterious sense of lose? A lose that is likely unintended on his part from what I have read?
So no, it is not these abstract expressions of Diebenkorn with their occasional years of figurative and representational works. But possibly the blues has something do with the hope and optimism that was dashed when a world became driven by materialism such as is so cleverly shared in the series Mad Men. Today, Diebenkorn’s paintings can be viewed on the imagined glossy magazine pages of the previous advertizing thrones of Madison Avenue while our noses are currently pressed up against the calving glaciers of impending climate change and Cohen brings us to our knees during a more resent poised rendering of his song “Hallelujah.”
Not a comfortable or perky image if I do say so. Possibly at this point, there is only one direction left for this artist to go and that is up. Yet, I stay awhile. Such hard fought drilling into the underbelly of darkness should not be wasted. Last evening we watch the 2010 Chilean film “Old Cats”written and directed by Sebastián Silva and Pedro Peirano. This film is an endevour to bring us full force into the mess of living at the ends of our life, and possibly the universe as we know it, with its unraveling unfinished and often unresolvable finality which must be accepted as it is – a work-in-progress.
At this very moment as I write, my honest answer is – I haven’t a clue. Are you surprised? The woman, the painter, the photographer and the writer who always seems to have some plan or other hasn’t a clue? True.
Once in a long while you see, I realize that most of what I am doing will matter not within hours, days or weeks of having done it. Yet, I persist in my delusions that it does matter and it is important. Why, we might ask, do I do this? Because to meet the reality face-on that it is all for no reason at all makes it hard to get up and then do what I am compelled to do. Therefore, in my normal altered state, I must believe what I do does matter and it is important – if only to me.
Also, thank you to everyone who commented, shared and voted on my three landscape paintings in the Arabella Competition for the People’s Choice Award. Due to a late change in the contest rules, these paintings have been eliminated from the possibility of being selected for this award. The change in the rules allow for only paintings selected for the semi-finals to be considered for the People’s Choice Award. My three paintings were not among the Canadian landscape paintings selected for the semi-finals. Disheartened, I remember those who have come before me and who have failed on numerous occasions to capture acceptance for their work. The list is long and I know I am in good company. However, this disappointing competition result does not lessen my humble gratitude for those who do collect and appreciate my work. Thank you all again for your unrelenting encouragement and support. I am reminded…
(my youngest grandson on the beach at New Castle Island)
I wish all the Canadian Landscape artists whose paintings are moving forward in this competition all the best and much success.
Because of all this, with these unraveling, unfinished and unresolvable marks on the canvas of my life, I shall continue to work on what will always be – a work-in-progress.
Spare no pigment on the palette and pass the brushes please.
