I have been in a very long dry period when it comes to painting.  About 2 years, in fact.  After I shut my studio doors in anticipation of the building being condemned and torn down  (so far it has only been condemned and set on fire)  I packed up the entire contents of said studio and brought them home, stuffing paintings and materials into various closets, nooks and crannies.  After my kid left home I co-opted her old bedroom as a studio of sorts, but most days I felt too melancholy being in there to have any creative urge sparked.  I was on empty.  Then about half a year into our Covid reality something sparked a tiny little creative flame.  An article on mending techniques that I shared online resulted in a friend mentioning a slow stitching group on social media.  I joined it and wholeheartedly embraced slow stitching for the next 6 months or so, finding it both mindful and blissfully soothing.  ( See my previous post o...

I began my slow stitch stories during the early days of the Covid. An artist by trade, I found myself with a severe case of painter's block beginning in early 2020, and turned to the ancient art of slow stitching to help calm and soothe my nerves.  The act of making small stitches on the various fabrics I found in rag bags and closets in my home was like meditation.  I began by making embroidered fabric pieces of approximately 5" x 5" that I call "slow stitch stories" all of which can be found on my Instagram account SlowStitchStories -  https://www.instagram.com/slowstitchstories/ Here are three slow stitch stories that chronicle my time nesting at home throughout the winter and my wish to reconnect with friends that I was missing: Home Safe and Sound   The Path To My Door   Until Our Paths Cross Again I then began creating brooches and talismans with the same recycled fabrics, also sourcing materials from India and Africa - recycled sari silk waste mat...

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...