Totally SHAMELESS Artist

I missed the class at art school when we were told that great artists aren't supposed to do cheapazoid things like putting your art on fridge magnets. These are little paintings that have in fact been turned into fridge magnets....so shoot me!

I won't be making a million of them...but maybe 100?....200? My theory is that fridge owners don't have nearly enough fridge magnets.

September Yellow

I was struck by the intensity of the yellow bean fields in early September. They are rather brownish now, but there were a few days when the color was peak. 10" x 9" acrylic collage painting on paper, listed on Etsy.

Near Home

A while ago now....just as the leaves where coming out....returning home and looking down the long, protected lane. The little white rectangle is my neighbor's mailbox....a few minutes walk to my place.

Acrylic collage painting on paper, 4" x 4", external paper size 5" x 5", now listed on Etsy.

April Sky

Only a while ago in April, my closest field looked like this, and now it is a very lush green. I would like to keep up with painting daily changes in the landscape but that is never possible. Suffice to know that nature does not really repeat and fascinating and endless surprises are available to anyone who simply looks.

4" x 4" acrylic collage painting on paper, external paper size 5" x 5", now listed on Etsy.

White House, May 2

The last of 3 little images made yesterday...completed from a motif noticed while doing the garage sale rounds in the morning. This tiny white spec of a house seemed so fresh in the midst of the new greens.....still the pinks in the background because foliage is just starting for deciduous trees.....also shot outside against my favourite flower, the tulip, which sadly seems to last only a few days now because cool spring days can turn summer hot in the snap of a finger.

Every picture requires tension of some sort....dark and light, bright and greyed colors, large and small, very loose and more controlled......all of these are noticeable here and consciously included in the painting process. As well, while every inch of the surface must always be considered, not all parts of the piece should be equally worked. Some areas are singled out for more development, some for less....and this also gives a desired tension. This aspect also seems to dovetail nicely with the way vision works. As we look at the world we choose to focus upon only certain things at any one time, but we remain aware of a great deal of secondary information in the form of peripheral vision. Some of the world seems very complex, busy and detailed....and other parts remain veils of generalized information...and it all fits seamlessly together. Not a new discovery at all and present in so many ways through art history. Just one example, the sfumato of High Renaissance and Baroque times allowed the artist to spotlight attention easily onto select subjects by allowing edges of objects to fade away unnoticeably into the simplified darkness of background. More and more I do notice that this contrast of the general to the specific is necessary and desirable in a picture, and can lead to some sense of realness at least akin to what is experienced in life.

4" x 4" acrylic collage painting on paper, external paper size 5" x 5", now listed on Etsy.

March 25th, 2009

This was made on March 25th. It's a collage painting on gessoed single ply matteboard....one of the first of the recent images in which I was considering the motif almost as emblem. It went very quickly and easily...and it's always very enjoyable when the very last step in the paintings is as fresh as the first step. Here, the last thing was the darker blots of grey in the sky.

8" x 10", soon to be listed on Etsy.

Fields

From a few days ago...exited the forest, still with plenty of snow cover, to look across these spring fields. It's a very cold day again today...it looks and feels like this....but the sun is beautiful and makes for a perfect day. I remember making these sheets of blue that I've been using for a number of skies recently. They were done at the end of a teaching day when students left unused acrylic blue behind. I recall thinking...'I wonder what I'll use these for'.

4" x 4" acrylic collage on paper, soon to be listed on Etsy.

Summer Storm

This 4" x 4" series continues. Working on very small scale encourages all sorts of experimentation. You can do anything and risk anything because it goes quickly and the investment is not large....try new composition methods, new colour arrangements, new paint sequences. I liked how the cloud mass moves in on the right....white paint was smeared beneath before the top shape was glued. It's a little thing, but I never did that before. I remember the sense of quickly fading light as a new bank of clouds moved in after a summer storm.....little bits of brighter green flashed to the eye in the foreground...I don't know what that little building is on the chick-a-biddies' property....it may be an outhouse, but it sure isn't discreetly positioned.

4" x 4" acrylic collage painting on paper, paper size 5" x 5", soon to be listed on Etsy.

?Spring?

From a few days ago....today it snowed again so the world did not look like this. Normally it is a bittersweet feeling to track the last patches of snow in spring...and I quite often make paintings about these last bits. Here it was the snow patch in combination with the birch trees that created the motif. But right now I'm not feeling so bittersweet about the passing of winter.....she just needed to deliver one last snow storm on April 6th!

Collage painting on paper, image size 4" x 4", listed on Etsy.

Economy

I don't like to waste. The things that I appreciate in the work done are not always visible to others. The blue of the sky was a waste piece of paper, folded and ready to throw out, before it was rescued and turned a perfect blue for this arrangement. The 1000s of little image impressions, seen, appreciated, and mentally set, are not complete until they are fixed in time, perhaps with a little picture like this. My hill, my piece of waste blue,.....waste no more....and likely to survive longer than I ever will. This is one of the reasons why art makes sense.

Acrylic collage painting on paper, image size 4" x 4", external paper size 6" x 6". Soon to be listed on Etsy.

Out Like a Lamb

Completed on March 31st. Almost all the snow is gone now, except in the forest. It's possible to get off the roads and into the fields. Here a patch of young tree growth caught my attention along a sharp hill incline. This is a 4" x 4" collage painting.....4 paintings were made in this session.

Will be listed on Etsy before too long.
SOLD

March Beach, Acrylic on Canvas

Another in this Oshawa series....the beach at Lakeview Park in late March as winter ends. This little area was a refuge.

12" x 16", acrylic on canvas.

Listed on Etsy.

Claiming a City

A long time ago, a move to an industrial city came as a shock. The only way I could make peace with the place was to walk for hours and document with 1000s of photographs. A long series of large works on paper, smaller and larger canvases resulted. The largest canvases were 4 x 5 feet. The images were often broody and gritty (I know and understand gritty), but there was also a searching and longing for 'home'...many of the paintings were of houses.

"Overview", acrylic on canvas, 18" x 22"

Listed on Etsy.

Seedlings

All I ever need to know is the next step...well, sometimes maybe 3-4 steps ahead. I wasn't very happy with setting the first shapes so large, but the interest in the colour relationships took over. I knew suggesting the tender littleness of the seedlings would be a nice surprise kept for the very end. The pleasure in finding surprising but suitable colours keeps the building of the piece going. I liked finding the light splotch colours for the front of of the carton...and the yellow on the side was also cool to find. The background was supposed to be much simpler in the early stages...gradually it got much more complex than this...but I simplified it.

I'm glad the picture got made....something to record this delicate little growth. Every day I see things that should be made into pictures...I make a note, and quite often never get back to them.

Head

This from a few days ago. I was pleased with how it turned out. As always, the point is to go on until it is satisfying in some way, and hopefully, satisfying in a way that hasn't quite happened before. Started with cut shapes, and paint at the end. The painting has to deliver a charge and usually, any sign of technical pickiness causes me to rework and simplify.

7.75" x 9.75", acrylic collage painting on single-ply archival matte, gessoed both sides.

Remembering July

Acrylic collage painting, on single-ply archival matte board, gessoed both sides, 8 x 9 inches.

Remembering the wild greens of early July last year.....looking south and east at the cedars that have grown so tall.

Methods

1) I used to prepare painting papers and paint directly in front of the motif while sitting in the car, or I'd spread a blanket and paint on the ground.

2) I still use the camera a lot and always have, but there are times when working from the photo just doesn't do it. The data might become too flat, too complex and convoluted, or it just might completely obscure the few essential elements that initially sparked interest in the motif.

3) The top photo is a memory painting and there are countless of those also. Most of the ideas come while I walk. Something seen makes an effect that lingers and the work is painted immediately upon returning home.

4) I'm forgetful and therefore I always have a sheet of typing paper folded up in 4 in my pocket, along with a pen.....I need that in my job to note down things that would otherwise be missed. Plenty of landscape impressions get recorded in this way as well....but they do not become paintings unless the painting session immediately follows....wait a day or even a few hours and the idea is cold. And sometimes on a walk, 4 such 2 minute drawings will be made, but perhaps only 2 become paintings.