Personal Talismans Shrine In these uncertain times we find ourselves living in, I have been having a hard time settling into any kind of regular painting process.  I have been feeling scattered and jittery, and I needed a project that was simple and intuitive to work on.  I decided on this little personal talismans shrine project - a quick and fun way to express my creativity and make something meaningful to me that gives me pleasure, both in the act of creating it and in the finished project.  I started with a tin box, 4.5 x 8 inches.  This box once held a rubber stamp set, but you can use a variety of tin boxes.  If you don't have a tin box, consider making a shrine using a small cardboard box instead.   This is what the box looked like inside.  I found a piece of paper from a pad of designer paper I use in teaching my mixed media workshops, and selected this section to line the left side of the box.  Using...

After a winter hiatus of percolating and experimenting, my Art Social Sessions are up and running once more, beginning Thursday, March 5th, 6-8 pm at The HUB in Cowichan Station. Registration is open now for the March sessions, which will be March 5th, 12th and 26th. The cost for the three sessions is 75.00, and includes most materials. Payment in advance is required, and space is limited. I have several small mixed media projects to work on - your choice, samples and instruction will be provided - or you are welcome to bring a mixed media project you have started a nd get some fresh ideas for completing it! That's the ART part, the SOCIAL part is about connecting and conversation! Women gathering and creating together is an ancient and satisfying ritual... "There is evidence of circle gatherings occurring as far back as 300,000 years ago, events that celebrated ritual, story-telling, dance, craft making and music. Gathering in circle is a vital eleme...

...we never, ever, finish there. I had a delightful weekend in the company of these three lovely women in my Intuitive Painting Two Day Intensive workshop.  I experimented with something new this time around, and had all of us begin with the exact same colour palette for the first four layers, and access to exactly the same tools and mark making items. As usual there was a wonderful mess on every table, a sure sign that creativity is brewing. Yes, that is corn. No, it's not lunch. And as I suspected, the canvases, even with the same colour palette and tools, varied wildly from person to person by the fourth layer.   (Sometimes you gotta get down when creating!)  Birds and hearts paved the way for houses and bicycles Sometimes fish show up, and you just have to deal with it! On day two we all worked hard, finessing the last minute touches on our paintings (plural for my students, singular for me - I never even touched my second canvas, so lost ...

Before - Nocturnal Dreaming - 2012 After - There is Music in the Spacing of the Spheres - 2018 Quite often as I am painting I think about the similarities between life and art, and never more than when I am working on a do-over.  I have discussed in other blog posts the concept of "when a painting is finished" and shown several examples of paintings of mine that have fallen prey to the do-over, sometimes years after they were "finished" (the first time).  As in life and card games, each of us players must constantly hold, play, and discard.  What gets held in the hand, what gets laid on the table, what goes onto the discard pile - for every one of us, every day, these "keep, play, discard" choices are made.  In a lifetime, we make millions of them, many of them unconsciously. In art, as in life, we also continuously keep, play, discard.  As artists, our styles, palettes and subject matter morph and change; in response to events in our ...

  Alchemist of Change Freedom From Within Last week I took the painting Alchemist of Change  that I had painted six years ago and transformed it. It even got a new name: Freedom From Within. My style and color palette has changed over the years, and I felt it was time for this piece to change too. One of the things that is hard to do, in life and in painting, is let go. There were several elements in this painting I was very attached to - the birdcage, the bird, and the words embedded in the bottom right corner. These were two quotes that really resonated with me at the time that I painted the original piece: Let your history be the alchemist of change and A diamond is a piece of coal made clear under pressure It was very difficult for me to let go of those words. I struggled with working around them for hours, but in the end I let them go, and welcomed the changes that letting go brought to the newly transformed piece. Besides, they are still there, jus...

I have 7 paintings to gift to the first peeps who contact me to claim them: (Update - all paintings have found new homes) lesleyfountainstudio@gmail.com or on facebook - Lesley Fountain Studio  Challenges Are Gifts - 24 x 24   GIFTED   Infinite Riches - 16 x 16   GIFTED  Hopes and Fears - 16 x 16    GIFTED   New World Emerging - 24 x 20   GIFTED It's Written in the Starlight  10 x 24  on board   GIFTED   "It's written in the starlight, and every line in your palm"  - Dire Straits This one is a particular favourite of mine. It is one of the nine paintings in a celestial series that showed up a couple of years ago. Here is a blog post about the series, how it came about, and a little bit about the paintings. http://lesleyfountain.blogspot.ca/2015/09/the-celestial-series.html   All My Bags Are Packed - 16 x 20    GIFTED Toge...

And somewhere between the time you arrive And the time you go May lie a reason you were alive But you'll never know   These lyrics from the 1973 Jackson Browne song For a Dancer strike a deep chord with me.  I have been blessed in my life to have met many people who have walked along beside me - sometimes for many years, sometimes for a short time - and while we walked together they shared with me their intrinsic beauty, their insights, their earthly gifts, and their own unique wisdom.  Whether you believe in spirit guides, divine intervention, guardian angels or kindred souls, for each of us, as we walk our solitary path in this life, there are those who share our journey with us, and if we are open and curious about the fate, destiny or serendipitous circumstances that placed each of these particular people in our path, it is my opinion that we can continue to learn, evolve, and accept and embrace the change, uncertainty, and the inevitable los...