January 6, 2022

This painting is still not finished.  Every day, I think it will be basically complete and then I can start the  fun part, the picky details, such as putting the far shore a little more in the background, giving high lights to the glass bottles, putting shine on the little white pitcher.  However, after each day of painting, it still needs just one more day.  This will be the first painting finished in 2022  and I will post it one more time when it actually is finished.  It has really been fun to do.   I started this painting in late autumn, after several killing frosts when I found a few cosmos still surviving in the garden at the end of our lane..   I just started playing. First of all, I started by painting the cosmos in oil on a red background. Then I spied a few nasturtiums that were still in  bloom at Kelsey’s and I brought them home and added them. The next day, Jim picked me this last white rose on the bush outside our dining room window and I added it.   Usually I have an idea of what a painting will be about.  This painting is completely different from the way I usually work.

Early in 2021, I finished two watercolours of our kitchen window and the view.  I had the idea in 2020 and I drew the first watercolour on paper and painted only the nasturtiums and sweet peas while I actually had the flowers.   I could hardly wait for winter to come  to be back in the studio  to finish it.  (Lots of times, I dread, moving back into the studio after a summer of trying to capture the beauty outside.) The first watercolour, worked out just the way, I intended. This doesn’t often happen.  I enjoyed doing it so much, that I was sad that it was finished so  I immediately started a second version, this time a vertical.  Both of these paintings, also featured the small polymer clay angel that Danica made for me. Since I enjoyed doing these two paintings so much, I eventually decided that this new oil  painting would also be about my kitchen windowsill with Danica’s angel and with a really high tide and in autumn. 

I just kept gradually started adding stuff. We still had tomatoes ripening on the counter so they were the next thing in.  Then the small Bolgatanga basket, a birthday present from a friend, Serena and used daily all summer to collect garden produce was painted. 

Bolgatanga, Ghana, was a place Jim and I visited several years ago. One of the highlights of this trip was watching and sketching the villagers as they created baskets. Everyone loved getting a sketch of themselves. The land was a dusty barren, parched by the intense heat. Men, cross-legged on the ground, wove the bases of the baskets. Young women, several nursing babies, wove the sides. Old women  and some of the children chewed strips of  reed for loops and handles. Everywhere, children raced and played. At one point, in front of the entire village, a woman presented me with a bowl of water.  Thinking that they were going to offer me food and that I should wash my hands, I put my hands in the water.  Everyone roared with laughter.  They had offered me special welcome water, and instead of drinking it, I had sullied it with my hands.   I was actually very happy that I made this faux pas, because if I had known, I would have taken a drink of the water to be polite and  who knows how sick it would have made me. 

Next to the basket in the painting, I needed something that was vertical and shiny.  Many years ago, a close friend, Susan,  was visiting from Toronto with her three sons.  Findlay, the middle child, presented us with this amazing plastic CN tower that he had chosen for us.   I have treasured this little tower and the memory of its presentation.  Findlay, a  wonderful boy  born with many health problems, died while he was still a college student. My world is a better place because of knowing Findlay. He  embraced each day no matter what the challenges.   This is the first time, I have found a painting in which to feature our golden CN tower.

My Dad always loved blue glass. And I do too.  Perhaps this runs in families?  When Kelsey was seven, all he wanted for Christmas was a blue glass Milk of Magnesia bottle that we had seen at our local antique shop in Glenholme for fifteen dollars.   I thought, I love that bottle too, I will just go to a pharmacy and buy one.  Of course, Milk of Magnesia was no longer sold in blue glass bottles and so I went back to the antique store and bought it for Kelsey.  Several years later, my friend, Laurie, will remember the day I dashed in front of a bulldozer in Bermuda to collect a Milk of Magnesia bottle that was poking out of the excavation.

As those of you who follow me along know, I  had a wonderful loving Grandmother.  The little white pitcher is something that an old lady gave Grandma when she was child.  The tiny jet and ivory cameo above the angel was carved by my gandmother’s

grandfather who were jet carvers in Whitby, England. Grandma’s family was booked to move to Canada in the spring of 1912.  Just prior to leaving, the Titanic sunk. Even though her family had sold off all of their belongings, they thought  that if the unsinkable boat could sink, their ship might also suffer the same fate and they stayed in England for another year.  When they did finally emigrate, a year later,  my grandma was thirteen and she wore this cameo. The ship didn’t sink.  It became her lucky piece. I wore it for all of my high school and university exams and the luck continued.  When my youngest daughter, Yolande, graduated from NASCAD, I thought that this little piece of art carved by her ancestors was the perfect graduation  present for her. Yolande sent me a photo of it, so I could include it in this painting.