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.

Word Picture June 4, 2021

 

Word Picture June 4 2021

 

The air is still and moist.

Etched into a lush green carpet of lawn,

The pond is a dark sombre mirror 

Polka dotted with lily leaves.

It is the magnolia that is magnificent

With its deep magenta buds,

That fade into enormous pale pink blossoms

 as they open for business.

 

Viridian green, olive green, sap green

Satiate the meadow.

To the west, the hawthorn,

Redeems itself in its one week of glory.

Even the cedar and  apple trees

Are now in their summer foliage.

A glowing yellow patch of wild mustard

 stands in for the forsythia and maples 

that have also rejoined  the status quo.

 

Framed by dark green silhouettes of spruce

The distant salt marsh is 

Delineated only by the island grave of beloved pets

And the soft hummock of Acadian Dyke.

Beyond, a light ashen veil obliterates

The bay,  the far shore and the sky.

 

This sets direction  for our day.

We push aside the future of

Old age, pandemics, global warming,

And  savour the tones and textures of today.

 

 

 

 

 

May 30, 2021

 Today’s musings on creativity and what creative people do to make art out of ideas.

I have always said that the most important characteristic that any artist must possess is tenacity or pigheadedness (no offence Wilbur).  We can’t decide to paint a wonderful painting or to write a wonderful book, we just have to start and invest our time with work  to try to drag an idea forward.  Creativity  is never easy.  I am convinced that the challenge is part of the process.   Just because there may be no money, or accolades from others doesn’t mean that the work isn’t worthwhile.  In fact, often it is the need for money or at least an end product that destroys the nebulous germ of a creative idea.  The freedom to mull over something and then to “play” with the ideas is where all art begins.

I have spent the past week sitting out by our small pond.  While Fen dug and ate the violets, I have tried to capture the beauty and abundance of the violets in watercolour.  The day I began this pond painting, I started  with the hosta  because it wasn’t quite fully out and I liked the tight shapes.   For many years, I thought that especially with watercolour, the entire plan of a painting should be decided ahead.  Now after experiencing the spontaneity and the ability to go backwards while working with oils and acrylics, I am using this approach in my watercolours as well.  By being willing to use my tiny scrubber brush and occasionally some white opaque paint, the creative decisions can be decided as the painting develops.

This morning, on our ramble with Fen, I was gobsmacked by the transient beauty of apple blossoms.  At the top of our path are three wild apple trees.  One was full of intense magenta pinks, another had buds that were subdued pale pink and the third was all white flowers with no hint of any colour.  When we returned from our walk, I was still thinking about apple blossoms. I gave myself permission to scrap what I had planned to work on today. Since apple blossoms seem to be calling out to me, I decided to listen and to try to capture their elusive beauty.

(This morning while painting these apple blossoms, I listened to Mary Haynes interview Amy Shearn on CBC Tapestry.  I agree with everything this author said.  If you are interested in the above thoughts on creativity, you might also want to listen to this podcast which is the first thirty minutes of Tapestry from May 21.)

June 1, 2021

  

Every Morning for the past couple of months I have been starting the day by reading one poem a day from the new collection “While Crossing the Field” by Deborah Banks (published Pottersfield Press 2020). I have decided that this is the way I love to savour poetry, one each day with time between  to savour the images and ideas.  It’s been a long while since I have been really been inspired by poetry.  This collection is marvellous with just the  perfect amount of description and always leaving me with a thought-provoking resolution.

 

As a young child, I delighted to my Grandfather reciting Robert’s Service’s “The Cremation of Sam McGee”.  One of the highlights of my trip to the Yukon with Jim was going to Lake Lebarge.

 

 In high school, I was besotted with Dylan Thomas, reciting “Under Milk Wood” (“never should have married- if she didn’t have to”) and  I loved Thomas’s “Altar-wise by Owl-light”. Every Christas when my children were little, I read them “A Child’s  Christmas in Wales”.

 

In University, I delighted in the quirky writing of  Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot”.  

 

Now for many years, I have let poetry disappear from my life.  I myself write word pictures, my attempt to capture beauty with words instead of paint.  I occasionally write rhyming verse to celebrate an occasion.  But I haven’t given other poet’s my full appreciation as I raced from one passage to another, not lingering to absorb the resonance.  With Deborah Banks collection, I am again excited about poetry.  It is like a huge gift to anticipate discovering the entire genre of poetry in small daily bits.  Of course, I will never get through very much poetry with only one or two selections a day, but I also know that I won’t run out of this pleasure in my lifetime.  So all of my other friends who are poets (Rosalee Peppard,  Sheree Fitch, Harry Thurston, Lesley Choyce, Rita Wilson) are next on my list!!!  And although I am a trying hard to help my friend Laurie, make the the Elizabeth Bishop House sustainable, I haven’t given Bishop’s  poetry close attention.  She’s on my list too.

 

 

Loons in April By Deborah Banks (shared with permission)

 

At last the loons have returned to the land.

Quietly coupled, they drift on a soft wake.

I have missed their hollowed winnowing

and the weighted aftereffects of it,

how my life in those moments is enlarged

and diminished simultaneously.

The riddling universe is asking us

to consider this sharp duality.

Both moments are the other and neither.

the loss in the loon’s call and what is found

in the residue of the silence after,

the deep wrinkles growing in my skin

and the fact that it does not matter-

only the lake echoes now and always.

 

 Memoir May 19, 2021

 

The painting, “Blue Taffeta with Flowers” hangs in our upstairs bathroom above the painting I featured yesterday of “Grandma and Mrs. Biggs”.  This painting features a photo of my Grandmother, as a young woman, a couple of old jars AND a dark blue taffeta skirt with pink paper flowers.  The taffeta came first.  I was visiting my sister and she said that she had an old evening skirt of my mother’s in her kid’s dress up boxes.  “Is it dark blue and shiny?” I asked.  When she said “yes”, I immediately claimed ownership of it and brought it home with me.  

 

When I was nine, I took piano lessons from Miss Dillon, our church organist.  She was a brutal teacher and I learned so much. The hardest part for me was walking to and from my lessons in the dark.  I was scared to death of rabid foxes and had to carry a big stick, just in case.  I remember running from street light to street light. By Christmas, I was playing Christmas Carols with two hands and that spring I got a starring role as Mother Nature in Miss Dillon’s annual operetta.  I don’t remember the song I sang but I do remember my costume. My Mom  cut down the blue taffeta evening skirt that she had made for herself for New Year’s Eve before she was married. She sewed pink paper flower around the hem.   I remember the lights shining on the skirt as I swirled and sang on stage. It was beautiful.  The next year, I change music teachers.  I walked in day light to Mrs. Newell’s.  She was a sweet, loving wonderful person. I never again was pushed to excel at music.

 

And the little photo in the painting, is  one of my wonderful Grandmother, Lily,  as a teenager.  Everyone in my Mom’s family had large noses.  (Another story I was repeatedly told was that when I was born everyone marvelled and laughed over my tiny  nose, the spitting image of my Dad).  I still remember on my first painting trip to England, admiring the giant noses on most of  the English people.

 Memoir May 18, 2021

Grandma and Mrs. Biggs

This painting brings back so many memories.  It hangs in our upstairs bathroom.  My sister doesn’t think it is appropriate to sit knee to knee with my Grandma and her friend Hattie Biggs  but I just love to see this painting each and everyday.  This painting was in my 1989 exhibition at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia.  I remember the curator of my exhibition didn’t want my paintings of people in the show as she felt they weren’t good enough.  I persisted perhaps because I was used to a husband not liking what I was painting.  I have always felt that artists have to be completely pigheaded.  What we paint and how we do it is the essence of art and it is really all we have to give.

This is my Grandparent’s living room at 196 Roger’s Road, Hamilton Ontario. I love to see their “modern” sofa and the little cushions that helped make it comfortable.  The only thing I left out was the large painting done by my Grandmother’s brother that hung on the wall behind as I felt it made the painting stronger and more harmonious

My Grandma didn’t whistle or tell stories or play the harmonic.  She didn’t grow giant tomatoes and she didn’t drive. She wasn’t interested in learning stuff.  She did love playing games with me and even though she was deaf, she loved to sing with us on the family car rides.  My Grandmother loved.  That is exactly what she did best.  She loved everyone. 

 She loved my Grandfather. Just before the first world war, her family moved from England to Hamilton Ontario. My grandmother was thirteen and her sister Martha was fifteen and they went to work in a knitting factory.  When she was twenty the war was over and after church one Sunday, Jack, my grandfather, who had been a Canadian foot soldier in France,  asked her father if he could walk Lily home from church. 

 “No” my Grandmother’s father said.  

“You can walk Martha (her unmarried older sister) home from church”. 

“But it is Lily that I want to walk home” replied my Grandfather.

My Grandmother told me about my Grandfather getting down on his knees to help her her boots.  They walked home from church together.  A few months later they were married  My Grandmother wore a beautiful new suit and a hat trimmed with flowers. After the church service,  they had a small family luncheon at her parents home to celebrate and then Lily and Jack went together to buy stove pipe for their new apartment.

“ I had to marry him, my Grandmother always said

”or I would never have gotten to see him.” 

 My Grandfather worked sixty hours a week at Westinghouse as draftsman and took night school courses, five nights a week!

 MAY 16, 2021

This morning, I packed my chair with art supplies. Then  Fen and I ambled down to a favourite stump next to our little cabin by the river. I have forgotten my water contain and tissue.  I use the lid off my water bottle and my sweater sleeve.  I soak in the beauty with paint and words.

Next to the salt marsh,

My old stump glows in dappled sun light.

There is the soothing endless gurgle of river.

Swaying above are the white blossoms and golden leaves of

an amelanchier; chuckley pear.

Crows screech by.

A woodpecker taps on a still standing, 

Dead or dying spruce.

A tiny black and white female warbler scampers up a tree.

Her nest is probably hidden on this forest floor.

My stump is gradually decaying 

Into the fallen leaves, needles, cones and roots.

Bits of mottled mauve bark have pealed away

Leaving crumbling orangey pulp 

That provides new homes for mosses;

Shaggy  olive green, 

Tiny dots of blue green,

Or rounded lumps of bright yellow green,

Rain and roots burrow into every crevice.

A tiny spruce seedling is also growing out of my stump,

One last gasp for life from a dead tree.