Seeing that it is the last day of February and it has been unusually cold with snow and wind and rain here on the southwest coast of Canada, maybe if we say “SPRING” all at the same time it will come true. What do you think? Shall we give it a try? Here is a photograph of a couple of tulips to help get us into the mood.
Ready? SPRING!…. Hum, let’s try again SPRING!!!! There! That should do it!
This week is a painting week. It is the first painting week in about a month. I have these two 8 X 10 inch canvas underpaintings ready to start working.
And this 24 X 36 inch canvas underpainting ready as well. I am about to begin what may possibly be a series of paintings in a study of blue using seascapes as my contextual reference.
You might ask why I am doing my underpaintings in lemon cadmium yellow and it is a fair question. First I am not fond of a white canvas. Second, I like to create layers of depth through hints of underpainting colours coming through. However, to work for blues, the underpainting must be well set. Otherwise it just becomes a muddy mess. It does seem take longer to complete a painting using underpaintings but I like the end results.
Note: I am likely going to work on these three paintings and begin at least two more this week. I do NOT anticipate having much for process images but we shall see. I provide this warning in advance so that you are not too disappointed on Friday.
Sprout question: Can you tell us about a creative series you want to do in the future?
Some weeks just seem to have a life of their own. I am going fess up first thing and let you know – not one print or painting was properly cataloged into my inventory. There. I have said.
What I did do was get an awesome chance to go “Hunting Waves” which, if you haven’t seen the photographs yet, you may enjoy. I picked up a couple of tubes of paint for my study of blues and two new brushes.
I took some shots at dusk that I am happy with. I fear they may too personal to have wide appeal but I thought I would share them with you anyway.
These images are the exact tone and feel I have been working to get through my new learning with Kat Sloma in her photography e-course “Finding Your Eye.” I wanted to capture just the right amount of light to feel the dusk and still be able to make out some of the detail. I wanted the viewer to feel that lull – the hush before darkness overtakes the day.
I didn’t paint this week but it was still amazingly creative.
Sprout question: What new learning did you apply to your creativity this week?
Best of the weekend to you! Oh, just in case you didn’t notice we went over 30,000 views here on Creative Potager. Thank you for the pleasure of your visits.
Every once in a long while, on the inside passage of the southwest coast, high winds and sunshine meet, bring in high waves to our sandstone shores. Yesterday was one of those ideal days. About 2:30 in the afternoon I went hunting for waves. Enjoy!
The warmth of the sandstone against the blue of the sea with the waves rolling in. I took another photograph.
My heart soared and sang to the rhythm of the sea. This is an image of Active Pass looking from Mayne Island to Galiano Island at the lighthouse.
But it is this next image I went hunting for. It happened early on in my shoot. As you know, Reef Bay is incredible most days. I crossed my fingers that it would be even more so today. The tides are low. Long stretches of the reef are bare. I need to leave shore to get the shot I want. I walk out on the reef with waves thundering beside me. It was safe but loud when the breakers hit. My heart pounds.
Caught in the arms of the blue sea I am swept across the shoreline – stepping, reaching, giving….
I have an idea for a series of smaller paintings exploring the many shades of the blue sea. These two images keep coming to mind but there are others.
However, my intention this week is to take care of art business. There are new phtography prints and paintings to inventory, a new portfolio page to develop and such things. I may start on some new paintings but that is not my intention. We shall see. Friday’s post will tell the story.
Sprout question: How do you keep your balance when the creativity waters are running fast?
Announcement: Creative Potager host, Terrill Welch, has a new venue displaying her photography in collaboration with fellow photographer Barbara McIntyre at the Green House Restaurant on Mayne Island.
We are very excited. Our shows of Gulf Island framed prints and canvas prints photography will change every one to two months. Please drop in if you are in our neighbourhood. You can’t miss it. The Green House Restaurant is on the right hand side just before you crest the last rise into Miner’s Bay.
The menu is diverse and delicious. In winter, there is all the cozy charm of home. You might even find me sitting at the closest table to the small fireplace sipping a glass of wine waiting for my dinner to be served.
In summer there are large decks that catch the late afternoon and evening sun. This is a great place to enjoy a quiet meal or visit with friends and take a long deep breath of Mayne Island relaxation. Make sure you slip inside to see what new we have on show.
Gerry always has a smile for you.
Owners Doug and Gerry decided to call the new restaurant the “Green House” because it was once the site of several green houses operated by the Japanese family before the Second World War. The house dates from about 1910, builder unknown. Kumazo Nagata bought it in 1921, and enlarged it in 1937. [Source: Ovanin, Thomas K. Island Heritage Buildings. Islands Trust, c. 1980.]
We are thrilled to have our photography on show in this historic building.
Of course for those readers from far away, you don’t have to come all the way to Mayne Island to view and purchase our photography.
Barbara McIntyre has a new redbubble account so feel free to drop on over and have a look there as well.
As many of you know, my work can be foundhere on redbubblewhere this new image “Shades of Blue” is available.
So glad you stopped in. Come on back anytime.
Sprout question: Where is your creativity showing this week?
First, my intention for this week is to brush my way into an oil painting using one of my charcoal figure sketches as a guide. It will be difficult as I have only the one sketch to work with and I have a particular setting in mind that has been inspired from a passage from The Underpainter(1997) by Jane Urquhart. Regrettably, I am reluctant to share more than this with you at the moment. It is an image that is perfectly clear in my mind’s eye with shifting tones and composition every time the painting whispers for me to begin the process to stillness on canvas. I will honour last week’s principle of waiting to be invited… but act immediately when asked. This way, with luck, the image won’t slip away like mist in the afternoon sun.
Now, allow me to introduce the most extraordinary Street Photographer Vivian Maier with the most unusual passage into notoriety. Her work was discovered in 2007 by a 26 year old, real estate agent/entrepreneur/historian – John Maloof – after he purchased a box of her negatives at an auction for $400. According to this brief excerpt about Vivian Maier in Wikipedia:
In 1951, at 25 years old, Vivian Maier moved from France to New York, where she worked for some time in a sweatshop. She made her way to the Chicago area’s North Shore in 1956 and became a nanny on and off for about 40 years, staying with one family for 14 of them. She was, in the accounts of the families for whom she worked, very private, spending her days off walking the streets of Chicago and taking photographs, most often with a Rolleiflex camera.
John Maloof, curator of Maier’s collection of photographs, summarizes the way the children she nannied would later describe her:
She was a Socialist, a Feminist, a movie critic, and a tell-it-like-it-is type of person. She learned English by going to theaters, which she loved. She wore a men’s jacket, men’s shoes and a large hat most of the time. She was constantly taking pictures, which she didn’t show anyone.
Between 1959 and 1960, Maier traveled to Los Angeles, Manila, Bangkok, Beijing, Egypt, Italy, and the American Southwest, taking pictures in each location. The trip was probably financed by the sale of a family farm in Alsace. For a brief period in the 1970s, Maier worked as a nanny for Phil Donahue’s children. As she got older, she collected more boxes of belongings, bringing them with her to each new post. At one employer’s house she stored 200 boxes of materials. Most were photographs or negatives, but Maier collected other objects, such as newspapers,and sometimes recorded audiotapes of conversations she had with the people she photographed.
Towards the end of her life, Maier may have been homeless for some time. She lived on Social Security checks and may have had another source of income, but the children she had taken care of in the early 1950s bought her an apartment and paid her bills. In 2008, she slipped on ice and hit her head. She did not fully recover and died in 2009 at the age of 83.
There is a part of creativity that is about showing up prepared. That means setting up your writing station and putting bum-to-chair. Or pulling out a canvas and placing it on the easel. Then putting a brush in your hand at a regularly scheduled time to paint. Or it means putting your camera bag on your shoulder and heading out everyday to take the photograph that is there to be taken. Each of us practicing our creative craft will engage in some form of preparation. If you are a musician or a dancer or a woodcarver you will know exactly what to do to show up prepared.
After doing a few warm up exercises, I find there is a second part to most creative processes. This is waiting to be invited. There is a pause or suspension of expectation or a kind of taut readiness. Mind, body and spirit seem to align and, there it is – the invitation. We know intuitively exactly what we need to do next. We proceed.
This is my intention for the week ahead. I have a half-finished painting and few canvases of various sizes that I picked up last week. I am going to set aside the time each day, be prepared, do my warm up exercises, stilling my mind and wait to be invited.
This is what happened when I took these two photographs at the Japanese garden on Friday morning. As the rain came down, I visited with a friend who is moving away. We were sitting on a sheltered bench. I had taken my camera even though the day was heavily clouded and didn’t show much promise.
First, this invite was extended to me.
And then this one.
I remembered my manners and said “thank you.”
And here are a couple of things you may find inspiring:
Last Tuesday, we slipped into Victoria B.C. and attended the IMAX theatre for the most impressive Van Gogh brush with Genius . Well worth seeing if you ever get the chance. Thank you Sherwin, from Shower Wisdom, for making such a compelling recommendation in your comment to last Monday’s post.
While we were in town we went to a couple of art galleries. At the new Madrona Gallery we saw a 3 X 4 foot acrylic painting by Karel Doruyler of a mature, dense west coast forest. His skill with light is outstanding. The work we saw was Thoughts of Summer. Doruyler has developed a heavily textured approach so that the tree trunks are significantly raised off the surface of the painting. Doruyler has been painting professionally for 40 years and is now 70 years old. His work leaves me with such a sense of possibility for my own continued development as an artist.
All the best in your creative endeavors!
Sprout question: Where are you showing up prepared to be invited?
Today heavy clouds filter the sun into a perpetual dawn. With rain tapping the roof now and again, I sleep late. No harm done – at least none that I have noticed. I remember our walk yesterday afternoon with its scattered clouds and soft light.
Walking a coastal trail…
Often looking towards the view but not going out to admire. We are smoked in. It seems as if someone is burning brush.
It is so pleasant under the trees. The air is heavy and still as we walk quietly through the soft light.
The best cooking fire is hot coals because they provide a body of even heat which will penetrate and cook without burning your food. Sometimes painting is like this for me. At first the flames of an idea blaze with excitement and I paint away with nothing but burnt remnants to show for my efforts. But sometimes I need to build a good fire first so that there are enough coals for a long cooking process. The painting Forest needs a good bed of coals to accommodate its density. The painting Orange Sea requires that I steadily add a stick or two at a time so that it can simmer without boiling over. Neither painting is finished. They are still cooking.
Sprout question: What kind of creative fire are you cooking with today?
Well, my underpaintings do not look very promising this week. I may or may not get time to work on them later today. So please don’t have high expectations tomorrow when I post the results. Sometimes creativity is like that. I tell myself there is learning to be had and just keep going. I also look back on other work that has been successful to boost my ability to be brave and bold and take the next step.
For today, I have been thinking about an image that I took early in the morning on New Year’s day. This pier is in Bennett Bay on Mayne Island. I have various images of it but this has to be my favourite. Enjoy.
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