The Prairie Paintings (dedicated to my mother)

This November my mother, who has suffered from increasing dementia for the past several years, was hospitalized with aspiration pneumonia. Apparently this is a fairly common path in any degenerative disease and with this inability to swallow the downward spiral begins. 

Under Western Skies / 20" x 20"

Making a Movie

For the past few months I have been working with film maker extraordinaire Patrice Halley to create a mini doc about my work. This has been a far more intense process than I anticipated.

   

Allowing anyone in my studio while I'm working is unusual but to have a guy with a camera in your face and underfoot every which way I turned was especially daunting.

    

The Beauty of Winter in Québec

7am Morning Walk / 24" x 24"

The winter figures prominently in my psyche and work these days. Having been born close to the Winter Solstice makes December a time of change and reflection for me. The ever shortening days, the receding and then returning light, the cold and snow wrapping itself around everything in a silent embrace, these all influence my work.

A Summer Collage

Collage 

is a word that comes to me often lately. I move through time and space seeking images for my work, even following them as they lead me from one adventure to another. 

Every single place, person and moment is offered up as material for translation into paint.

Life and Art fuse.

 

Watching the Patterns of the Land

I have been reading The Snowy Tower by Martin Shaw and am enthralled with his insights into how stories and images come to us from watching the patterns of the land:

"A slow emergence from the tree line - a mist of story. Not in the clipped tempo of the written sentence, but in a galloping, roaming, rampant language that tears into the soul like the vivid colors of a jungle bird...We no longer rove, ablaze and alive in the greenness of things...we're getting big on statistics, big on knowledge, but if ever we needed wisdom, now is the time."

Breaking Through / 30" x 40" 

Strength in Vulnerability

"Dance when you're broken open. Dance, if you've torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance when you're perfectly free."  ~Rumi

The other day I drew the Hanged Man card from the Tarot deck and it felt appropriate. Twenty months ago Loss was the price I had to pay for a great Love in my life and Walt was worth every tear. 

Recently my heart started to beat with love and life again. I could feel the blood start to flow anew as I recognized the first feelings of longing again. I didn't think it was possible. Slowly, tentatively I felt eros stirring inside, I couldn't believe it...and then just as I started to move towards the beckoning my heart was promptly shattered. 

Grief flows in mysterious patterns.

We Appear in this World for a Brief Moment / 40" x 60"

The Hanged Man represents an inward seeking.

The true quest is seeking within, not without. The fresh wound of loss was ripped open,

Toronto Artist Project 2017

The last few months has seen a steady rhythmic production of new paintings. The wintery months in Montreal usually turn me into an introvert who hunkers down in the studio all day, returning home in the early evening to eat a meal and read until bedtime. The days are short, the light is limited and the temperature is cold outside. 

This year there has been the added preoccupation of a frightening political situation south of the border. There seems to be a constant barrage of information and events that is simultaneously promoting fear and hatred as it also awakens people to rise up in a shared love of humanity and our planet. It feels both inspiring and frightening to watch this tension of opposites become more and more polarized. I understand the world through intuition and feeling. It is my intuition that if we are able to hold the tension between the opposites long enough perhaps a third way will be born or made known to us. I feel the familiar crumbling away and the earth shifting, it feels dangerous and uncertain. All I can do is trust the process that is unfolding, speak up when my heart tells me to and PAINT. I paint to learn what it is I need to know. My paintings are always ahead of my own understanding of life and so I follow their lead and let them guide me.

All of this is showing up in my work as a fervent inner burning that transmutes into brighter and bolder colours!  This video is a brief glimpse into some of the newest work:

Next Tuesday I will load the car with all the new work and head for Toronto to exhibit at The Artist Project , a large contemporary Art Fair of 250 artists. Please help me to spread the word and come by yourself if you are in the area! Always a fun event to attend and I'd love to see you! Stop by at booth 922 and say hi!

Falling into Autumn

Falling into Autumn / 24" x 24" / acrylic on prepared panel

New Plein Air Paintings Available

Several new paintings fresh off the easel from the Adirondacks in August

River Running / 16" x 20" 

Clouds of Flowers / 18" x 24"

Stay Weird / 18" x 24" 

Glacial Erratic / 18" x 24"

St Regis Canoe Input / 16" x 20"

Talking Trees / 20" x 16"

Yoga, Art and the Spring Equinox

When does winter end and when does Spring begin?

Today I got up at 5:30 am and committed to an annual Spring ritual. A local yoga studio celebrates the Spring Equinox with a daily 7am morning yoga session.  I am NOT a morning person, I am a night owl, staying up into the wee hours of the night. However the morning always offers me a gift when I decide to crawl out of my warm duvet trailing dreamtime with me as I stumble around in the dark getting ready.  This morning's gift was the color of the sky, I don't think there is a word for the blue that I experienced this morning. I had to clean the snow, yes, MORE snow from my car and as I looked up, there was that sky! A blue so deep it was filled with the dreams of those still sleeping. My reward for getting up.

Rapture in a Mosaic Sky / 36" x 48" / acrylic on canvas

I was so happy to arrive at the yoga studio in this "in between time". It was still dark enough that I had my car lights on to drive and the yoga studio was lit with candles.

Presence

An exhibition of recent paintings that are the result of years of learning and growing and becoming. All the joys & sorrows from where the spirit meets the bone are in these paintings. Late night howling and mid day spirit-rides with the wind are all mixed into the pigment.

Open Studio ~ Friday, November 28, 2014

There is so much great energy in the studio these days that I have decided to open the studio door and welcome in visitors from 3pm to 7pm on Friday.

Lots of new work and a great time to catch up with some of you!

Preparing for the Inhale

Thanksgiving week-end has given me time to reflect on the gratitude I feel for being alive in this moment in this place and with the people who surround me. 

It has been an ever expanding exhale all summer long and even into the autumn months. I have been walking trails, climbing mountains, swimming in lakes and fully immersed in the outdoors as much as possible.

       

Now it is time to take all that extraverted energy and turn it inward in one long inhale over the winter. All the sights, sounds, smells and textures of the living, breathing earth will find their way into my paintings if I am still enough to hear them.

I can't wait to return to my studio for some quiet, solitary months at the easel processing all the beautiful impressions of the summer and autumn months. 

Every year that goes by my impressions appear to broaden and deepen from within and without. The whole landscape seems numinous to me at times. I often feel as though the natural world is lit up from within and radiating beauty and mystery. The more I paint the more I see and more often than not I feel rich beyond my wildest dreams with all that is there in and around me. Its a mystery I don't even want to know the answer to.

An Adirondack Love Affair

I have spent most of the summer breathing in the beauty of the Adirondacks and falling more in love with the place every day. I have, painted and hiked and paddled and painted.

I continue to meet interesting and generous people everywhere I go. This year's painting culminated in a grand pop up gallery held in magnificent private home on Upper Saranac Lake. It is so rewarding to have a large body of work (40 paintings) installed in such a gorgeous home environment. This whole story began last July when I had a solo exhbition at View in Old Forge, a wonderful Arts Center with several well designed gallery spaces for exhibitons. I became an accidental artist-in-residence when a certain woman purchased the signature piece from my show. Marsha Stanley has written a delightful article about this experience from her perspective that was recently published in the Adirondack Almanac.

 

A beautiful preview cocktail party was held for the AdkAction.org board members as well as the board of the local Wild Center. Both of these places are dear to my heart and 20% of all sales were donated to AdkAction.org for the many wonderful projects they do in the area. I will be giving a talk at the Wild Center on Sept 8, 2014. The talk is entitled "The Wilderness Within" and will give a glimpse into the process of my own artwork as well as discuss the advantages of using social media as an isolated rural artist.

The pop up continued for another two days and many, many people dropped by. I sold eighteen paintings! The gallery curator from the prestigious resort next door called "The Point" came by and selected four paintings for their gallery as well. It was a tremendously successful experience for me on many levels.

It is a lot of work to do a pop up gallery but well worth the effort. The direct contact with the people who come to see and/or purchase my artwork creates new connections and friends that I value dearly. I will be returning this week-end to participate in the Plein Air Arts Festival organized by Artworks of Saranac Lake. I am looking forward to this event as there are so many incredible spots to paint in this sparkling part of the Adirondacks.

 Rock Portal / SOLD

Earth Bones / SOLD

Progress of a Deep Forest Painting

Upcoming Open Studio

 

Open Studio - Thursday, June 5th from 3pm to 8pm

Come and share a glass of wine and check out the artwork.

Click on the Eventbrite link in the right hand column and register for a chance to win one of my paintings in a draw which you can enter simply by dropping by!

(All the info and directions are also included in the Eventbrite Invitation) 

Looking forward to seeing you all!

Wild & Precious Moment

This is a photo of me working on my last painting, "One Wild & Precious Moment" taken by my oldest daughter, Amy as we hung out in the studio for a brief hour before taking her to the airport. Amy lives across the country from me and I rarely see her these days as she finishes her teaching degree in Kamloops, BC so this was indeed one of those precious moments.

I was keenly aware that Amy would be leaving again shortly. After having spent a glorious ten days traipsing across Italy with her, this was a beautiful gift to have her resting on the couch while I returned to my "ordinary" daily life in the studio. While the music of her ipod filled the studio, my body relaxed into the finishing touches of a painting that I felt was both successful and succinct in expressing my inward landscape of tumultuous and ephemeral joy. The title for the painting is inspired by Mary Oliver's delightful poem "Summer Day" where the act of attention is a form of prayer.

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-- the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down--
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Mary Oliver, The House Light Beacon Press Boston, 1990.

The Ways of Water

An impromptu exhibition of some larger landscape pieces is now showing at the E.K. Voland Art Gallery in my St Henri studio building.

One Wild & Precious Moment / 72" x 48" / acrylic on canvas

The Red Line / 48" x 72" / acrylic on canvas

Undercurrents / 72" x 54" / oil on canvas

Stone Carvers / 60" x 40" / oil on canvas